At 08:23 PM 1/24/96 +0700, Patiwat Panurach (akira rising) wrote:
Would you call cypherpunks (as a group and as a philosophy) to be influential? Do you think governments listen to us much? Are they forced to listen to us? Any stuff to support this? Please give me your comments.
Much more influential than deserved. We've gotten a lot of press. I would say that we are an example of cultural entrepreneurship. An entrepreneur makes money by noticing that there is an unexploited difference between the price of a final product and the sum of the prices of the factors of its production (discounted to present value). We noticed that there is a difference between the social and technical capabilities of modern math and modern computing on the one hand and the public perception of those capabilities on the other. By simply pointing out those mistakes in public perception and doing some (as little as possible) coding to prove it, we've gained some publicity. An example of the gap between perception and reality that we can easily exploit, I would point to the regulation of broadcasting. There's a lot of talk with the telecoms bill about whether and how much broadcasting should be deregulated but it is obvious to us that it already has been. I was thinking of that while doing my mail and listening to the Leader of the Free World last night via RealAudio 2.0 and KLIF radio in Dallas via Audionet. Radio has been deregulated by technological change since RealAudio appeared last Summer. TV dereg will follow with the higher bandwidth. All cypherpunks have done is to point out simple facts like this. Pretty easy work if you can get it. DCF "My fellow Americans, we must free our nation from the tyranny of "Others Government" and turn instead to "Self Government". We must accomplish this great task not for ourselves, but for the *Children*." -- 10-second SOTU Address