Perry E. Metzger wrote:
rishab@dxm.ernet.in says:
WIRED 3.02 (February) interviews Jude Milhon (St. Jude) who "is a charter member of the cypherpunks - a term that she coined." I didn't even know there _was_ a charter.
Or a Jude Milhon, for that matter. Another example of the continuing decay of a once proud magazine...
I'm not sure what Perry's not having heard of Jude Milhon is supposed to mean, or how "Wired" interviewing her is "another example of the continuing decay," etc. In any case, Jude Milhon has been active in the hacker-writer community, going back to the 1970s. Steven Levy's "Hackers" has several pages on her role in various things happening in the Lee Felsenstein circle of folks (there may be some of you who have no idea who Lee is....I can only hope that when you find interviews with him you not assume decay is occurring). More recently she was an editor at "Mondo 2000" and has had various connections to Cypherpunks. Jude was indeed the coiner of the "cypherpunk" term, and was at most of the early meetings, for at least the first year. (My FAQ will have more information on how Jude came to think of the name and whatnot.) She's not presently subscribed and hence can't speak up in this strange matter of how an interview with her implies a magazine is in decay. (I'm hoping this is not what Perry really meant, but I can't see any other interpretations based on what I quoted above.) I just don't think Jude deserves this kind of casual trashing. While I haven't been reading "Mondo" regularly for a couple of years, and while I'm getting bored with "Wired," this doesn't mean that people being interviewed deserve trashing. (Indeed, the "bleeding edge" trendiness of "Wired," say, means that nearly anything once "wired" is fated to be marked as "tired" by the "stimulate me!" Starbucks crowd of techno-yuppies. Unlike a more staid journal, like "Nature" or "The Economist," as examples, trendy techno-style mags like "Wired," "Spin," "boing boing," "Future Sex," and a hundred other wirehead variants of "Vogue" and "People" will appeal precisely to the style mavens who so fickly announce what is trendy and what is not. Anyone who professes to be "disappointed" by "Wired" was clearly taken in by their hype. (For what it's worth, I still enjoy flipping through the pages, often finding one or two items that spark my thinking. No, much of it is junk. So what else is new?) Oh, and on Rishab's original point about "charter members," I took this in the usual figurative sense. A charter member of the Cypherpunks is basically just a card-carrying member. (Hint: Find your own cards.) --Tim -- .......................................................................... Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay@netcom.com | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero | knowledge, reputations, information markets, W.A.S.T.E.: Aptos, CA | black markets, collapse of governments. Higher Power: 2^859433 | Public Key: PGP and MailSafe available. Cypherpunks list: majordomo@toad.com with body message of only: subscribe cypherpunks. FAQ available at ftp.netcom.com in pub/tc/tcmay