-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- At 11:58 am -0400 on 9/2/97, Tim May wrote:
At 5:43 AM -0700 9/2/97, Robert Hettinga wrote:
So, Tim, what should we all be working on, in particular?
OK, you asked. This isn't a comprehensive list.
[outstanding non-comprehensive list snipped] So, Tim, does this mean that you're now willing to fund development of any of those things? Sorry to bait and switch you like that, Tim, but I had a point. That is, if it doesn't make money, it won't happen. Economic "utilitarianism", like the rest of reality, is not optional.
Also, 95% of the crap about "digital commerce" is merely a distraction. The wrong direction, the wrong technology. Just "Visa on the Net," and hence of no real use for our sorts of goals. Worse, the wrong direction.
Agreed. Book-entry transactions on the internet are the functional equivalent of an electric car with a power cord. Or trying to make a supersonic derigible. And, the *only* way you can have bearer certificate transactions on the net of any non-repudiable strength is with cryptography. The strongest cryptographic protocols, for very little extra cost, are those involving anonymous bearer certificates, and so, I claim, anonymous bearer certificate protocols will eventually replace "Visa on the Net", with digital bearer forms of picocash, or macrobonds, or anonymously held equity or derivatives. You certainly can't do those anywhere, much less on the net, with book-entry settlement. The net, or the machines which use them, anyway, would choke on the overhead. The internet sees audit trails as damage and routes around them, to torture poor Gilmore's quote one more time... So, my goal is *not* to maximize privacy, because it's a natural consequence of my actual goal, which is reduce the cost of any given transaction by 3 or so orders of magnitude. To maximize profit, in other words. The way to do that, on a ubiquitous internet, is, paradoxically, with strong cryptography. That, I am sure, is a fundemental economic fact of the universe. Amazing, isn't it, that my goal and your goal get the same result of ubiquitous financial (and thus any other kind of) anonymity? Kind of like the neat way that some mathematics describes physical processes, or that aerodynamic flight, ostensibly orthogonal to economics, is cheaper than long distance surface travel, much less boyant flight, for moving people around. An argument that Hume would have loved, certainly. The connection between privacy and economic return is only constant conjunction, like the sun coming up tomorrow because it came up every morning in human memory. It's going to be just as predictable, though. So, getting back to my point, which Sameer and PGP and even RSA have proven already, and which lots of the rest of us hope to prove going forward, cryptoanarchy must pay for itself in order to be deployed. It's that simple. In other words, if you want to see it, Tim, and you can't build it yourself, hire it built, and see if it sells. It's risky, any investment is, but given your past financial success, you're demonstrably clueful enough to get a good return for any investment you make in cryptography. Cheers, Bob Hettinga - ----------------- Robert Hettinga (rah@shipwright.com), Philodox e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' The e$ Home Page: http://www.shipwright.com/ -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: PGP for Personal Privacy 5.0 Charset: noconv iQEVAwUBNAzBMMUCGwxmWcHhAQHGSQf/YVe284MvE+mptcsgMhFl+a1Uz1/dbCRM wd0f0MaQ1BPSGmXIkhcBjcLddy3jO5m6PBGpXCaJ1HAiCIu5Id6ocKURs4Y6SWD1 ntQCpfmfR8DWf6t7n0S9O0CadmtlPjRhv9jpT7yI5+QGc8RaIyXsTetdAZ8GXRFf /OjZ2ML5oKNer/7BwfKs+BYfFHxZIGTm7ocpliT4dfJGpXuBpMgjdNVrrrdKI5Ec PBR9RB/ct8I0bKg+GdmF2o4vwJlYGjT5tyIbKxEnSABsN/TgHYZXYgmqFg8woWDZ jbPIzSeeDUHlOZ7SuZqLhYc7ox+iM50hKwlOnZL/tW0pwHq2srqaqQ== =JGAl -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----