Re: Recommendations for Cypherpunks Books
Can you distinguish a "cypherpunk" genre from a "cyberpunk" genre, and is it a worthwhile distinction, and what are the features ?
Yes, it is worthwhile. Good luck finding anything that is remotely acceptable.
Perhaps I can offer a starting point: First tier (works that are specifically focused on cryptographic technologies): (1) - books on future worlds and spaces: in particular, those that explore social, moral, political, technical, ethical issues (to be science fiction), or those that merely explore worlds (to be fantasy) (2) - books on cryptography theory and systems: from the basic theory (cryptography primitives), to the high level systems (public key infrastructure). (3) - books on privacy, ethics and social questions: defining good and bad cryptography in the various contexts (low level technical, high level social), including politics (trade barriers). Second tier (works that are more general and not specifically focused on cryptographic technologies): - second tier to (1) - general science fiction and fantasy exploration of future worlds involving technology or otherwise, but not primarily focused on cryptography (technical, social or ethnographical) - second tier to (2) - general mathematics, communications and computing, such as number theory, quantum computing, dna computing, internetworking systems, identity management. - second tier to (3) - general computing and technology issues of privacy, ethics, sociology, ethology. What I would enjoy reading: - books on cryptoterrorism and cryptoliberation, where a major part of the plot revolves around the use of cryptography technologies in terrorism or liberation. - books on cryptocommunities, where a major part of the plot revolves around people that are "cryptoheads" and for which cryptography and technology is a major part of their lifestyle (people who somewhat live, breathe and eat cryptography). _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com.
On Sat, 20 Jan 2001, Foobulus Baracculus wrote:
What I would enjoy reading: - books on cryptoterrorism and cryptoliberation, where a major part of the plot revolves around the use of cryptography technologies in terrorism or liberation.
Why? No, really - do we really need a book in which the majority of the time is devoted to a minute analysis of how the Evil Terrorist screws up his web of trust? Can you imagine the prose that would result? -- "Sign it," Shirley said. As he popped the diskette into the drive of his laptop, he began to reflect on the magnitude of the responsibility he had just undertaken. How could he know that Shirley was not actually working for one of Them? As the key display came up on his screen, he scanned the list of signatures. Alfonse, Mohammed, Mummar - he quickly checked his mental map of the Organization's web of trust. His signature was all she needed before the Great Leader would accept her key as valid! His blood turned to ice in his veins. He had made a terrible, terrible mistake. "What's wrong?" Shirley breathed down his neck, "get on with it!" "OK," he finally said. And hit return. The disk drive whirred. A few seconds, and it was done. He popped out the diskette, handed it to Shirley, and began to think of good ways to die. -- Maybe this is all right for a few pages or so, but an entire book? even an entire story? It's hard for me to see how to pull it off without the story being eaten alive by the details. Look, don't get me wrong, for a long time I wanted "stories about CRYPTOgraphy, man!" too. Even tried writing one or two, but they never made it anywhere. Why? Because if the story is about the cryptography instead of about a story...it's not likely to be much of a story. (Remind me to tell you about this idea for a guy beta-testing the first spex-ware who becomes involved in a plot to re-elect President Flockhart by forcing a hung election and then predicting the resulting coin-toss in mid-air using a supremely powerful computer sometime...) The danger that constantly threatens with this kind of thing seems to be that any story is pushed aside in favor of a discussion of "101 Amazing Things You Can Do With Cryptography." Then why read that instead of Applied Cryptography? The other extreme, of course, is the hollywood route. No real understanding of cryptography, beyond "black boxes that break codes." Hopefully I don't have to explain why this is unsatisfactory. I don't know of anything explicitly focused on cryptography which manages to strike the right balance. "True Names" is what we always talk about as The Cypherpunk Novella - but if you look at it, there's remarkably little cryptography or discussion of technology. Much more about pseudonyms and the ability to project control across computer networks. _Cryptonomicon_ separates the story and the expository parts; a strategy which prevents disaster, but has its own cost.
- books on cryptocommunities, where a major part of the plot revolves around people that are "cryptoheads" and for which cryptography and technology is a major part of their lifestyle (people who somewhat live, breathe and eat cryptography).
Stephenson's "Drummers" in _The Diamond Age_ and the CryptNet loosely associated with them seem to almost fit this bill. Except that we never do find out much about how they work, as far as I recall. Again, I'd be a bit wary of a story written by someone who set out to "write about crypto-heads." The truth is likely to be a bit stranger than fiction. At least until the two are a bit closer than they are now. On the other hand, there are gems like St. Jude's story about the cypherpunks from 1992 (recently reposted here) which sparkle with wit, brilliance, and razor language. All my doubts carried away. At least until I realize that the story was written in 1992, and here we are nine years later... -David
On Sat, 20 Jan 2001, Foobulus Baracculus wrote:
Perhaps I can offer a starting point:
First tier (works that are specifically focused on cryptographic technologies):
(1) - books on future worlds and spaces: in particular, those that explore social, moral, political, technical, ethical issues (to be science fiction), or those that merely explore worlds (to be fantasy)
I see the utility in fiction to tell us what is most likely not to happen.
(2) - books on cryptography theory and systems: from the basic theory (cryptography primitives), to the high level systems (public key infrastructure).
(3) - books on privacy, ethics and social questions: defining good and bad cryptography in the various contexts (low level technical, high level social), including politics (trade barriers).
'defining good and bad'? Not possible, there are no absolute standards by which to judge. I also think it is important that there be specific identification and discussion on issues which aren't ameniable to 'technical means'. There was a problem posed on the list in it's early years. I don't remember it exactly and I'm not motivated to search, but I'll try to do it justice. Assume for a moment that you are a peasant in some country, say N. Korea. There's no food, little work, nearly non-existant medicine, no free speech/press, no right to try at the individual level to try to change things (the hallmark of any enlightened society I suspect). The US flies a plane over and drops everyone some sort of PDA widget. Now, assume in addition your child is sick and you believe she may die. How do you use the device to save her life?
Second tier (works that are more general and not specifically focused on cryptographic technologies):
- second tier to (1) - general science fiction and fantasy exploration of future worlds involving technology or otherwise, but not primarily focused on cryptography (technical, social or ethnographical)
- second tier to (2) - general mathematics, communications and computing, such as number theory, quantum computing, dna computing, internetworking systems, identity management.
- second tier to (3) - general computing and technology issues of privacy, ethics, sociology, ethology.
What I would enjoy reading:
- books on cryptoterrorism and cryptoliberation, where a major part of the plot revolves around the use of cryptography technologies in terrorism or liberation.
Not a lot, some about viruses and such. There's not a lot of glammer in it.
- books on cryptocommunities, where a major part of the plot revolves around people that are "cryptoheads" and for which cryptography and technology is a major part of their lifestyle (people who somewhat live, breathe and eat cryptography).
Ugh. The thought of a community that is so paranoid it exist through ubiquitous crypto is a bit self-contradictory I think. Who would you trust to make the technology? How would anyone have the time to make the horde of technologies this sort of society requires? This aspect is one reason I believe that the only way that the human race can survive is to get off this mudball ASAP. To that end requires a ubiquitous technology of similar scale and scope as that required for your hypothesis. I also believe that this paranoia will eventually lead (rightly so I might add) society to break into 'families' or 'arcologies'. You want have a job so much as you'll be a member in a large family business. One of the major current issues which I strongly believe is being completely overlooked is the impact of the coming life extension/cloning technology will mean to individual lifetimes. I contend that anyone is alive in 2020 will live to be at least 150 years old. I'll further predict that within that 150 years it will be further extended. The impact on human society of this will be like nothing this species has faced before. It's at most 500 years away. The society which comes out of this will also be like nothing that has ever existed before. It will represent a true revolution in society. Anarchist, Socialist, Democratist, Crypt-anarchist, whatever 'ist is your favorite are all passe, dead as the Dodo. They just don't know it yet. Technology will support the very first truely consensual society. I do believe that 'privacy' will not exist as we understand it today. Economies based on competition (ideal or real-world) will not exist either. Economies of scale will swallow them up and spit out their bleached bones. This means that in as little as a thousand years 'business' as we see them today will cease to exist. There is an alternative, inbreeding. ____________________________________________________________________ Before a larger group can see the virtue of an idea, a smaller group must first understand it. "Stranger Suns" George Zebrowski The Armadillo Group ,::////;::-. James Choate Austin, Tx /:'///// ``::>/|/ ravage@ssz.com www.ssz.com .', |||| `/( e\ 512-451-7087 -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- --------------------------------------------------------------------
On Sat, 20 Jan 2001, Jim Choate wrote:
(1) - books on future worlds and spaces: in particular, those that explore social, moral, political, technical, ethical issues (to be science fiction), or those that merely explore worlds (to be fantasy)
I see the utility in fiction to tell us what is most likely not to happen.
"If I name a future, then it won't happen" - ? This reminds me of the view that SF writers are trying to "predict the future." I don't think picturing "the future" and then being "wrong" or "right" about that is what fiction is usually about. More often about commenting on the present.
(2) - books on cryptography theory and systems: from the basic theory (cryptography primitives), to the high level systems (public key infrastructure).
Just in passing, you may want to check out Stefan Brands' thesis - depending on your background. If you're new to cryptography per se, then _Applied Cryptography_ is a place to start.
(3) - books on privacy, ethics and social questions: defining good and bad cryptography in the various contexts (low level technical, high level social), including politics (trade barriers).
'defining good and bad'? Not possible, there are no absolute standards by which to judge.
The definition would assert some standard by which to judge. Not necessarily grounded in any "absolute standard." You can reject that standard, of course, but there are still people trying to formulate and defend these standards. One effort in this direction which comes to mind is the "communtarian" approach applied to privacy by Amitai Etizoni. What I've heard of it I don't like, but I don't know much more than a few basic things - "community" above all, corporate invasions of privacy pure evil, state intrusions less evil because subject to scrutiny. To this you could oppose the sort of libertarian standard more often seen on cypherunks, with its familiar consequences.
I also think it is important that there be specific identification and discussion on issues which aren't ameniable to 'technical means'.
Yes. _Secrets and Lies_ is a start towards this in an information security context. I am reminded of the Salon article "Twilight of the crypto-geeks." http://www.salonmag.com/tech/feature/2000/04/13/libertarians/index1.html I am also reminded of the phrase "technology is neutral" and how it seems to polarize a debate. One side regards it as an argument that banning technology is misguided. The other side as evidence of total naivete. I don't suppose anyone has actually tried analysing where that phrase or "technical vs. social means" pops up?
things (the hallmark of any enlightened society I suspect). The US flies a plane over and drops everyone some sort of PDA widget. Now, assume in addition your child is sick and you believe she may die. How do you use the device to save her life?
Why, write a killer version of Solitaire and barter it for medicine! Probably not. Does this thing have connections to the outside world? To other PDAs within range? How much range? Who can you contact with this? Can you sell the results of your computation to others? Now if you were the only one with a PDA, maybe you could figure out a way to sell computation to other people just by doing arithmetic. Perform parlor tricks and pass yourself off as a calculator. But everyone has a PDA. So now you need to have skills...
- books on cryptoterrorism and cryptoliberation, where a major part of the plot revolves around the use of cryptography technologies in terrorism or liberation.
Not a lot, some about viruses and such. There's not a lot of glammer in it.
There's a bit more on computer security generally - _Terminal Compromise_ by Schwartau comes to mind. I think I owe him about $3.50...
- books on cryptocommunities, where a major part of the plot revolves around people that are "cryptoheads" and for which cryptography and technology is a major part of their lifestyle (people who somewhat live, breathe and eat cryptography).
Ugh. The thought of a community that is so paranoid it exist through ubiquitous crypto is a bit self-contradictory I think. Who would you trust to make the technology?
Who said anything about the community being paranoid? You can use cryptography to do new things beyond hiding data, you know. Probably the most pressing would be authentication and controlling the data presented to the world about you. Digital signatures and credentials. If this PKI stuff works, then in 50 years it won't be the paranoids that can exist only through ubiquitous crypto - it'll be *all* of us. Digital driver's licenses and all. (Thanks to VeriSign for that awful phrase). Now you can go further and ask "what if a society had digital auction protools?" or "what if selling your CPU cycles was normal and easy?" or "what if everyone knew about time-lock puzzles and time-release crypto and could use it in everyday life?" or "what if the elections went according to protocol X?" Even further, what if a society had the will and the capability to use all of these crypto protocols just as soon as they were developed? (For instance, posit that the provable security problem and the protocol assembly problem are solved. You think of something you want to do, you can put it together yourself and have it work.)
How would anyone have the time to make the horde of technologies this sort of society requires?
PGP is here now, though of course no one uses it. PKI seems to be driven by something, e-commerce maybe. Academics and corporate research are looking for new and fun things to do with math. Sometimes they hire students to implement those fun things. Sometimes other people read the papers and implement the fun things themselves. Where did anonymous remailers come from? thanks, -David
On Sun, 21 Jan 2001, dmolnar wrote:
On Sat, 20 Jan 2001, Jim Choate wrote:
(1) - books on future worlds and spaces: in particular, those that explore social, moral, political, technical, ethical issues (to be science fiction), or those that merely explore worlds (to be fantasy)
I see the utility in fiction to tell us what is most likely not to happen.
"If I name a future, then it won't happen" - ?
This reminds me of the view that SF writers are trying to "predict the future." I don't think picturing "the future" and then being "wrong" or "right" about that is what fiction is usually about. More often about commenting on the present.
I'd say it's primarily about entertainment. Even if it's an intentional social/technical commentary. There is also the point to be made that society is effected more by those things which were unexpected (I don't know if 'revolution' is the correct word here???) than evolutionary. The change of electricity, the printing press, etc. For some potential non-fictional ways to cast the problem: The New Renaissance: Computers and the next level of civilization D.S. Robertson ISBN 0-19-512189-9 Technologies of knowing: A proposal for the human sciences J. Willinsky ISBN 0-8070-6106-9 Code and other laws of cyberspace L. Lessig ISBN 0-465-03912-x
'defining good and bad'? Not possible, there are no absolute standards by which to judge.
The definition would assert some standard by which to judge. Not necessarily grounded in any "absolute standard." You can reject that standard, of course, but there are still people trying to formulate and defend these standards.
But 'self-referential' is by no means equivalent to 'absolute'. As to your last statement, I see we agree. The concept of 'good and bad' and any consequent 'definitions' are a function of 'people'. It IS a relative issue and therefore open to debate. This is a clear indicator that this particular issue is not axiomatic. It is clearly an affect, no more.
One effort in this direction which comes to mind is the "communtarian" approach applied to privacy by Amitai Etizoni. What I've heard of it I don't like, but I don't know much more than a few basic things - "community" above all, corporate invasions of privacy pure evil, state intrusions less evil because subject to scrutiny.
To this you could oppose the sort of libertarian standard more often seen on cypherunks, with its familiar consequences.
I've always considered 'communitarian' to be a branch of (wait for it), socialism. It requires consistency of behaviour, down to the level of trying to micro-manage individuals individual thoughts. Trying to reach that utopian ESS of the human soul I suppose. In defence of my criticism of ESS's applied to biology I offer (being a dutiful Gaian Pantheist), Slanted Truths: Essays on Gaia, Symbiosis, and Evolution L. Margulis, D. Sagan (yes that Sagan, which should id that Margulis :) ISBN 0-387-94927-5
I am also reminded of the phrase "technology is neutral" and how it seems to polarize a debate. One side regards it as an argument that banning technology is misguided. The other side as evidence of total naivete. I don't suppose anyone has actually tried analysing where that phrase or "technical vs. social means" pops up?
The cosmos is certainly neutral. But since 'technology' exists only within the context of a human society (ie humans build technology) trying to cast that as 'neutral' (eg government funding & corporate research) is either naive enthusiasm for reductionism or else intentional misdirection. I've alwasy rankled at the concept that 'technical' and 'social' are not sides of the same n-sided die called human psychology. Reductionism has its place, it is not however, everyplace.
Does this thing have connections to the outside world? To other PDAs within range? How much range? Who can you contact with this? Can you sell the results of your computation to others?
Now if you were the only one with a PDA, maybe you could figure out a way to sell computation to other people just by doing arithmetic. Perform parlor tricks and pass yourself off as a calculator. But everyone has a PDA. So now you need to have skills...
<shrug> A lot of good questions I have no intention of answering :). Make up your own set of rules, play them against each other... If you find something interesting, share please.
Ugh. The thought of a community that is so paranoid it exist through ubiquitous crypto is a bit self-contradictory I think. Who would you trust to make the technology?
Who said anything about the community being paranoid? You can use cryptography to do new things beyond hiding data, you know. Probably the most pressing would be authentication and controlling the data presented to the world about you. Digital signatures and credentials.
There is a certain level of paranoia (recognition of a real threat certainly qualifies as paranoia in my book) required to even conjure up the concept of security and crypto as an instance... Actually I susepect that society will advance to impliment crypto in the background. It will be used to enforce the bounds of each indviduals social boundaries. Yes, it does embody 'web-of-trust' but not as the only or primary mechanism for society as a whole. This again, is the reason I believe that the Open Source movement within the context of Lessig's book has an opportunity to build a much more humane and reasonable society. I also believe the odds are very low it will come to pass. Human sollipsism.
If this PKI stuff works, then in 50 years it won't be the paranoids that can exist only through ubiquitous crypto - it'll be *all* of us. Digital driver's licenses and all. (Thanks to VeriSign for that awful phrase).
It'll work. But there are other factors which will be concommitent. Consider the extension of the average human lifespan on insurance, investment, business, etc. There are other factors at work which will impact the society and the economy in a equally strong (potentialy much stronger perhaps) but 'negative' way, and I don't mean bad, I mean in opposite sign to way. These technologies are going to cause a period of inflation, and that will cause various social and political changes, that will be like nothing we've ever seen. This should limit the 'theoretical' maximum change of technology over some reference (and arbitrary) period. Once a new equilibrium is reached then there should be a rapid expansion until the next 'big thing'. In our case the chance is there that we might get to see it first person. It'd be like being alive when Guttenberg first printed his book and surviving until today. What will be the effect on 'family' when 20 generations are alive and communicating at one time? (coincidentally, there's a web-of-trust).
Now you can go further and ask "what if a society had digital auction protools?" or "what if selling your CPU cycles was normal and easy?"
I'm trying to get a Plan 9 network up and running to do just that now for Plan 9 users here in Austin. Offer a 'virtual community' workspace that users can map into their personal namespace (ooh, another web-of-trust ;). In support I offer, Small Worlds: The dynamics of networks between order and randomness D.J. Watts ISBN 0-691-00541-9 Multi-agent Systems: An introduction to distributed AI J. Ferber ISBN 0-201-36048-9 If you're interested in using a OS that embodies a lot of the basic requirements for distributed communities, distributed processing, distributed file spaces, low level network encryption, distributed anonymous remailers, distributed data havens, communal workspaces, etc. then check out Plan 9. http://plan9.bell-labs.com I also have a mailing list that is available, Hangar 18 http://einstein.ssz.com/hangar18
or "what if everyone knew about time-lock puzzles and time-release crypto and could use it in everyday life?" or "what if the elections went according to protocol X?"
I believe the point would be that society would progress beyond the need for such things. What this will engender will be a return to 'family' or 'zaibatsu' centered human societies. Economies based on competition won't exist because each community will share the resources as required. It will be a large barter commune. The interfaces between these 'arcologies' will be very well defended and about the only place 'trade' will take place and that will be through information exchange not the actual exchange of goods. Why? Because each arcology will be self-suffient within the domain of its ownings. Remember you've got 20 generations alive at the same time. 'Family' is set to return with a vengeance. My guess is we've got a space of about 200 years to get off this mudball and get out there. If we don't we'll drown in our own waste. The end result will be that humans won't live on planets per se. And that's got maybe 500 to a 1000 years to happen or else the proto-society will run out of gas. The only real hope/good there is that pockets of humans will be scattered about. That raises the odds of the phoenix arising.
How would anyone have the time to make the horde of technologies this sort of society requires?
PGP is here now, though of course no one uses it. PKI seems to be driven by something, e-commerce maybe. Academics and corporate research are looking for new and fun things to do with math. Sometimes they hire students to implement those fun things. Sometimes other people read the papers and implement the fun things themselves.
Where did anonymous remailers come from?
But you're talking about developing a society, not a group of friends that numbers in a few hundred... I don't buy it. ____________________________________________________________________ Before a larger group can see the virtue of an idea, a smaller group must first understand it. "Stranger Suns" George Zebrowski The Armadillo Group ,::////;::-. James Choate Austin, Tx /:'///// ``::>/|/ ravage@ssz.com www.ssz.com .', |||| `/( e\ 512-451-7087 -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- --------------------------------------------------------------------
One of the major values to fiction is that it lets you think about the social implications of technology, in most cases without going deeply into the technology itself. That's important for cypherpunks, though the street finds its own uses for tech, and it's easier to describe crypto non-bogusly than it is to describe star-drive engines or brain-machine interfaces. Neil Stephenson's Cryptonomicon is of course recommended, and classics like Vinge's "True Names" and "A Fire Upon The Deep". and Stephenson's "Snow Crash". Orson Scott Card's "Ender's Game" has some nice treatment of reputation systems and pseudonymity - unfortunately it's *much* harder to get the tech correct than it is to write about what if feels like to use well-designed systems :-) Brunner's "Shockwave Rider" and Sterling's "Islands in the Net" hit some of the appropriate space. "Trouble and Her Friends" has some good treatment of cryptographically protected subcultures, though that's more as redeeming-social-value for a book that's written for genre. "Idoru" by Gibson does some of the same. Then there's "ruthless.com" by "whatever hack writer Tom Clancy's franchised his name out to these days" - Bad Tech, 1-dimensional characters, but it's interesting to see whose political agenda he's selling out to. Bring your barf bags, but read it....
One effort in this direction which comes to mind is the "communitarian" approach applied to privacy by Amitai Etizoni. What I've heard of it I don't like, but I don't know much more than a few basic things - "community" above all, corporate invasions of privacy pure evil, state intrusions less evil because subject to scrutiny.
Etizoni is a very technical boy. Unfortunately, his value system led him to invent "Fair Cryptography" (that's "fair" as in "Fair Trade", not "fair" as in "actually fair to anybody" :-), which covers a couple of variants on key escrow. Thanks! Bill Bill Stewart, bill.stewart@pobox.com PGP Fingerprint D454 E202 CBC8 40BF 3C85 B884 0ABE 4639
On Mon, 22 Jan 2001, Bill Stewart wrote:
"Trouble and Her Friends" has some good treatment of cryptographically protected subcultures, though that's more as redeeming-social-value for a book that's written for genre.
Yes, that had been nagging at me. I haven't read it in years so didn't want to speak up and find that I'd confused it with some other book...but I remember it being really good.
Etizoni is a very technical boy. Unfortunately, his value system led him to invent "Fair Cryptography" (that's "fair" as in "Fair Trade", not "fair" as in "actually fair to anybody" :-), which covers a couple of variants on key escrow.
Hmm. So this explains all those papers on "fair cryptosystems." Well, at least one paper (and patent!) by Micali... -David
At 07:09 PM 1/22/01 -0500, dmolnar wrote:
Etizoni is a very technical boy. Unfortunately, his value system led him to invent "Fair Cryptography" (that's "fair" as in "Fair Trade", not "fair" as in "actually fair to anybody" :-), which covers a couple of variants on key escrow.
Hmm. So this explains all those papers on "fair cryptosystems." Well, at least one paper (and patent!) by Micali...
Gak. How did I spaz so badly on that one? Of course it was Micali. Ignore my whole paragraph! I think Etizoni did something technical though, but maybe it was some other privacy-degrading thing, or maybe I'm remembering him commenting on fair cryptosystems. Thanks! Bill Bill Stewart, bill.stewart@pobox.com PGP Fingerprint D454 E202 CBC8 40BF 3C85 B884 0ABE 4639
Bill Stewart wrote: [...]
Neil Stephenson's Cryptonomicon is of course recommended, and classics like Vinge's "True Names" and "A Fire Upon The Deep". and Stephenson's "Snow Crash". Orson Scott Card's "Ender's Game" has some nice treatment of reputation systems and pseudonymity - unfortunately it's *much* harder to get the tech correct than it is to write about what if feels like to use well-designed systems :-) Brunner's "Shockwave Rider" and Sterling's "Islands in the Net" hit some of the appropriate space. "Trouble and Her Friends" has some good treatment of cryptographically protected subcultures, though that's more as redeeming-social-value for a book that's written for genre. "Idoru" by Gibson does some of the same.
[...] Brunner seconded, and a bid for Ken MacLeod. "Stone Canal" is probably the one most cypherpunks would like the most - set in a well-described crypto-anarchic polity where "information wants to be free" and is willing to fight for it. CPs ought to love the trial scene. In an anarchy you start by agreeing on what law you will be judged by and who is to be the judge. Reading them in order is best - "Star Fraction" is basically old-fashioned 1980s-style cyberpunk (but he knows his stuff & is serious about AI & cryptography, then "Stone Canal", "The Cassini Division" (my favourite), then "Sky Road". Some of the best sf of the last 5 years. Ken (not him - the other one)
Hi Jim,
I'd say it's primarily about entertainment. Even if it's an intentional social/technical commentary. There is also the point to be made that society is effected more by those things which were unexpected (I don't know if 'revolution' is the correct word here???) than evolutionary. The change of electricity, the printing press, etc.
This suggests a tangent - If we look at works of fiction which were politically or socially influential in their day, how many were entertaining? how many were "good stories"? A lot of polemics end up seeming transparent and thin today (I'm thinking in particular of Bellamy's _Looking Backward_, but there are probably other examples). They had to capture their audience somehow, which seems to say something about the audience of the time (or maybe just about the tendency people have to overlook faults in a book which agrees with them). As for things unexpected - maybe it would be interesting to look at the literature issued just after the possibility of the new invention becomes known. Atomic power, for instance, was written about by H.G. Wells long before the atomic bomb was built. Maybe atomic power is too extreme a case, though. Bringing this back to "cypherpunk literature", such a look might provide parallels with the emergence (or lack thereof) of crypto-oriented fiction.
But 'self-referential' is by no means equivalent to 'absolute'. As to your last statement, I see we agree. The concept of 'good and bad' and any consequent 'definitions' are a function of 'people'. It IS a relative issue and therefore open to debate. This is a clear indicator that this particular issue is not axiomatic. It is clearly an affect, no more.
Yes, it seems we agree. Except it seems that instead of dismissing definitions of "good" and "evil" as "an affect, no more" (if I'm reading you correctly?) - it seems to me that this is where the real battles are fought. So instead of being dismissive, it seems like a better idea to *pay attention*. (This may be a sign of youth). Even so - in math class I am told "if two reasonable people start from the same premises, they should arrive at the same conclusion." In philosophy I find that Frege called a failure to apply the same laws of logic a "new form of madness." In the ethics course, I am told "we always expect reasonable people to arrive at *different* conclusions." Odd.
I've always considered 'communitarian' to be a branch of (wait for it),
socialism. It requires consistency of behaviour, down to the level of
Here I thought you were going to say COMMUNISM! :-) I just came across a biography of Robespierre. In it he's mentioned as writing an essay for a prize competition in the 1770s, in which "under the influence of Montesquieu" he condemns the republican ideal of <<vertu>> as requiring unnatural conformity of action and dishonourable actions. Before turning around and reflecting that the monarchist alternative cannot be justified on grounds of public utility...well, we know where he eventually ends up. Anyway, it seems that "community" has taken the place of the "general will" or "will of the people" as the utopian abstraction of the day. This is annoying, because there *does* seem to be some merit to talking about a "community" (or "society" for that matter) as a unit for purposes of analysis. Even anarchists (especially anarchists?) talk about community. (Godwin's "public opinion more powerful than whips and chains.") As soon as you do so, however, suddenly you've accidentally imported all this "communitarian" baggage...
Slanted Truths: Essays on Gaia, Symbiosis, and Evolution L. Margulis, D. Sagan (yes that Sagan, which should id that Margulis :) ISBN 0-387-94927-5
Onto the to-skim pile - thanks.
alwasy rankled at the concept that 'technical' and 'social' are not sides of the same n-sided die called human psychology. Reductionism has its place, it is not however, everyplace.
Aren't they considered two sides of the die? I always thought that was the point of the pervasive "Two Cultures" dichotomy - that you have a binary opposition between "techs" on the one hand and "humanists" on the other. Which, like many binary oppositions, fails to satisfy.
<shrug> A lot of good questions I have no intention of answering :). Make up your own set of rules, play them against each other...
Sounds like an invitation to build a genetic algorithm. Heh.
There is a certain level of paranoia (recognition of a real threat certainly qualifies as paranoia in my book) required to even conjure up the concept of security and crypto as an instance...
OK, but this does not strike me as *absurdly* paranoid. I understood your point to be that any society paranoid enough to use massive amounts of cryptography would be absurdly paranoid (maybe unstable). Maybe there's a question of degree here? Plus not every member of the society must be equally paranoid, once the infrastructure is in place. How paranoid are my parents when they use SSL to send credit card info to a web site - without even realizing that they're using SSL or how it works? Paranoia on the part of a few can change the lives of many.
Actually I susepect that society will advance to impliment crypto in the background. It will be used to enforce the bounds of each indviduals social boundaries. Yes, it does embody 'web-of-trust' but not as the only
So you think we'll end up with "one citizen, one identity?" Do you think this will be an explicit norm - that people will react to the idea of having two distinct identities online the way we would to having two distinct identities in "real life" today? It wasn't that long ago that Sherry Turkle's _Life on the Screen_ was supposed to be *the* account of how "we" were going to relate in cyberspace. Except that who uses MUDs anymore? Where do we find the open vistas of text, the vast plains of meaning, the mirror-stage-online which so beautifully "informed" Turkle's account? Is anyone still talking about the liberatory power of multiple identity - instead of footnotes in books about e-commerce noting that web polls can be easily pseudospoofed? (Plus I found the book much less convincing than _The Second Self_ - maybe because it strayed from the focus on cognitive development and questions like "what is alive?" which made _The Second Self_ gripping. Last I heard, Turkle is back asking kids "what is alive?" with respect to Furbies. Should be intriguing to see what comes out. )
This again, is the reason I believe that the Open Source movement within the context of Lessig's book has an opportunity to build a much more humane and reasonable society. I also believe the odds are very low it will come to pass. Human sollipsism.
"Humane" and "reasonable" ? I'm sure you're right, but those two words do not inspire much confidence in me right now. (Coming out of a course on French Social and Political Doctrines 1789-present will do that). Frankly, a "humane" and "reasonable" society issuing from Open Source principles makes me think of a Committee on Public Safety run by Slashdot readers. (Disclaimer: I am a Slashdot reader). This is no doubt unfair, but the semi-political pronouncements I've seen from GNU have a nasty could-be-called "communitarian" streak in them.
I'm trying to get a Plan 9 network up and running to do just that now for Plan 9 users here in Austin. Offer a 'virtual community' workspace that users can map into their personal namespace (ooh, another web-of-trust ;).
Oh, cool. Some friends of mine are working with Plan 9. I'll have to check this out at some point...I've been too busy to pay much attention.
I believe the point would be that society would progress beyond the need for such things. What this will engender will be a return to 'family' or 'zaibatsu' centered human societies. Economies based on competition won't exist because each community will share the resources as required. It will be a large barter commune. The interfaces between these 'arcologies' will be very well defended and about the only place 'trade' will take place and that will be through information exchange not the actual exchange of goods. Why? Because each arcology will be self-suffient within the domain of its ownings.
Perhaps. I'm wary of making these kinds of pronouncements. It's a curve-fitting problem. "Here are six events - build a trend around them." The rise of planned communities (including Summerlin, where I live in Nevada) *could* point the way towards arcologies and master-planned living. It could also engender a backlash which ends up with everyone going back to live in the cities to create closer communities with their fellow (wo)man. Can you imagine a latter-day Gandhi who exhorts people to move back to the cities to live with each other again? No? Why? Yes? Why arcologies and not Gandhi? Then our entire deliberations are blown to bits by advances in nanotechnology...
Remember you've got 20 generations alive at the same time. 'Family' is set to return with a vengeance.
It would provide large family-owned corporations with even more interesting politics than they might currently posess, that's for sure. An alternative may be that the generation gap asserts itself with a vengeance. Dad and Jr. can't get along - what about Dad and the 17th? Instead of isolating vertically, societies isolate horizontally. Lots of parallel institutions with mandatory minimum and mandatory retirement ages. Kids born in years between large bumps end up caught on the edge - perpetually too old for the ones behind, too young to ever be accepted in the society born before them. So all this is fine, but I dislike saying that this is what "will happen."
My guess is we've got a space of about 200 years to get off this mudball and get out there. If we don't we'll drown in our own waste. The end
I tend to agree with you - but I also remember that in the 70's we had predictions of world disaster by the 00's. Not quite there yet. Still Malthus has to be right in the long run... Anyway, I want space for less easily justifiable reasons. Such as "what's out there?" and "we can do it." Also I want to go (was into space before ever heard of cryptography) :-). Unfortunately I'm too tall and too heavy to make the trip on anything NASA has right now. Besides my family history of heart trouble.
But you're talking about developing a society, not a group of friends that numbers in a few hundred...
If the will is there, it will be developed. Look at what's going to happen to electronic voting now. After Florida, people really seem to want it. MIT and Cal Tech have announced an initiative to build a "real" system. Build a market by building consensus and the technology will step up. (I suppose I should dispute in passing the dichotomy between a society and "a group of friends that numbers in a few hundred" - but the fundamental point seems to be scaling. Which is a problem no matter what you call the user.) The reason why remailers are limited to a group of friends that numbers in a few hundred is that no one has articulated a clear and compelling reason to "everybody" why "everybody" needs to use them. People have argued why "everybody" needs remailers *around* or why they're a good thing, or at least why *not to ban them*, but this is different. No one is advertising for anonymous remailers on the radio. No one is on the television talking about how we need a national network of anonymous remailers. No one seems to be making any money off the things, *except* maybe zks.net . Change this and we get the infrastructure for a society. -David
On Tue, 23 Jan 2001, dmolnar wrote:
Even so - in math class I am told "if two reasonable people start from the same premises, they should arrive at the same conclusion." In philosophy I find that Frege called a failure to apply the same laws of logic a "new form of madness."
In the ethics course, I am told "we always expect reasonable people to arrive at *different* conclusions."
Odd.
No, it's not at all odd. Your math prof neglected to mention that the two people must also start with the same objectives. (In math, they always assume that people are all motivated to solve the same problem...) Your ethics prof neglected to mention that he assumes people's objectives, or values, differ in some way. If we had a sufficiently advanced model of economics and politics and technical advances, and adequate data, we could sit here and mechanically forecast the next 200 years. That's math. Same premises, same value, same conclusion. But I might find the forecast future horrifying and you might like it. That's ethics; same premises, different values, different conclusions. And the fact is that we don't have that sufficiently advanced model, so even if we accept *some* of the same premises, there are judgement calls and guesses we will make during the forecast that the two of us make differently. These constitute different premises. That's futurism. Different premises, Different values, different conclusions. However, even if we forecast completely different futures, and I see some law as being needed to stop the venusians from stealing our cattle in 2059 and you figure the same law will be needed to prevent banks from enslaving the last surviving mayan tribe under a mountain of debt in 2062, we can get together and work for the passage of that law. That's politics. Some Different premises, Some different values, Some of the same conclusions. Bear
At 01:27 AM 1/23/01 -0500, dmolnar wrote:
This suggests a tangent - If we look at works of fiction which were politically or socially influential in their day, how many were entertaining? how many were "good stories"? A lot of polemics end up seeming transparent and thin today (I'm thinking in particular of Bellamy's _Looking Backward_, but there are probably other examples). They had to capture their audience somehow, which seems to say something about the audience of the time (or maybe just about the tendency people have to overlook faults in a book which agrees with them).
There's always Ayn Rand - "The Fountainhead" has at least some depth of characters, as opposed to her later and more polemic <fnord>"Telemachus Sneezed", with the 600-page speech by John Guilt</fnord> "Atlas Shrugged", with its much thinner characters and increased preachiness. On the other hand, a lot of Frank Lloyd Wright's buildings haven't passed the physical tests of time, and I gather geodesic domes tend to leak even if they're not built as badly as those that Some Local Cypherpunks are living in - we'll see how geodesic economies do... Thanks! Bill Bill Stewart, bill.stewart@pobox.com PGP Fingerprint D454 E202 CBC8 40BF 3C85 B884 0ABE 4639
On Tue, 23 Jan 2001, dmolnar wrote:
This suggests a tangent - If we look at works of fiction which were politically or socially influential in their day, how many were entertaining? how many were "good stories"? A lot of polemics end up seeming transparent and thin today (I'm thinking in particular of Bellamy's _Looking Backward_, but there are probably other examples). They had to capture their audience somehow, which seems to say something about the audience of the time (or maybe just about the tendency people have to overlook faults in a book which agrees with them).
I think most, that entertainment value is what helped at least in part to make their discussion palitable. After all it follows if the book is both popular and influencial it is actually changing peoples mind.
As for things unexpected - maybe it would be interesting to look at the literature issued just after the possibility of the new invention becomes known. Atomic power, for instance, was written about by H.G. Wells long before the atomic bomb was built. Maybe atomic power is too extreme a case, though.
Wells was contemporanious with the growth of atomic physics. I think it's more likely a cose of being too close.
Yes, it seems we agree. Except it seems that instead of dismissing definitions of "good" and "evil" as "an affect, no more" (if I'm reading you correctly?) - it seems to me that this is where the real battles are fought. So instead of being dismissive, it seems like a better idea to *pay attention*. (This may be a sign of youth).
Actualy it gives us a reason, both reasoned and emotional, to consider alternatives like 'harm'. They're more pragmatic and easier to define across social belief systems. Things like murder, rape, & theft are pretty common. Then we include concepts like freedom of religion and speech and we begin to see a framework where a multi-cultural society can exist. It allows the keeping of local 'web-of-trusts' while at the same providing a more general framework for commerce and human experession.
Even so - in math class I am told "if two reasonable people start from the same premises, they should arrive at the same conclusion." In philosophy I find that Frege called a failure to apply the same laws of logic a "new form of madness."
I think the operable point is 'same premises'. The true test of a theory is when the parties start at different premises.
Here I thought you were going to say COMMUNISM! :-)
A more specific form of socialism.
Aren't they considered two sides of the die?
n-sided.
OK, but this does not strike me as *absurdly* paranoid. I understood your point to be that any society paranoid enough to use massive amounts of cryptography would be absurdly paranoid (maybe unstable). Maybe there's a question of degree here?
Oh, not at all. I'm simply saying that considering human nature any society that isn't paranoid isn't going to last long. Like it or not (personaly I'm rather fond of it) the human animal is a predator. A damn smart, ruthless, cold-blooded, determined killer. That is one of the prime facts as to why we got to where we are. This realization is one of the reasons I'm interested in the subject.
So you think we'll end up with "one citizen, one identity?" Do you think this will be an explicit norm - that people will react to the idea of having two distinct identities online the way we would to having two distinct identities in "real life" today?
No, I actually expect to see a growth in the desire for anonymity. As people realize the true extend of data mining and the extent of both commercial and government databases they will become more paranoid. People will finaly come to realize explicitly that freedom IS security (which I've always felt was the point behind Franklin's quote).
the liberatory power of multiple identity - instead of footnotes in books about e-commerce noting that web polls can be easily pseudospoofed?
I've always felt these predictions didn't understand the fundamental nature of the network requirements. The current internet and OS technology simply isn't up to it.
"Humane" and "reasonable" ? I'm sure you're right, but those two words do not inspire much confidence in me right now. (Coming out of a course on French Social and Political Doctrines 1789-present will do that).
Frankly, a "humane" and "reasonable" society issuing from Open Source principles makes me think of a Committee on Public Safety run by Slashdot readers.
Ok, I've spoken poorly. I'm not talking of the society per se but rather the network that it is built upon. If we follow the current model Lessig's point of regulation by compiler will come to pass. However, if instead we have a network infrastructure that is end to end developed Open Source it provides no room to regulate. Lawmakers can't as a matter of course pass a law dictating what network stack you might use (at least in the US). That would provide a base for a more humane and reasonable society. A society where freedom of expression and social responsibility are balanced as they should be (at least under the 4th).
Oh, cool. Some friends of mine are working with Plan 9. I'll have to check this out at some point...I've been too busy to pay much attention.
http://einstein.ssz.com/hangar18
Perhaps. I'm wary of making these kinds of pronouncements. It's a curve-fitting problem. "Here are six events - build a trend around them." The rise of planned communities (including Summerlin, where I live in Nevada) *could* point the way towards arcologies and master-planned living. It could also engender a backlash which ends up with everyone going back to live in the cities to create closer communities with their fellow (wo)man.
I'll have to disagree, it's a statistical mechanical problem. Not deterministic at all. One of the primary memes, and primary problems, is this point. It's almost like talking to DeCarte.
Can you imagine a latter-day Gandhi who exhorts people to move back to the cities to live with each other again? No? Why?
I don't see the relevancy.
Yes? Why arcologies and not Gandhi?
Because within the arcology the society can set its own norms while at the same time interacting with others. The question is what holds such an arcology together? A strong common culture.
Then our entire deliberations are blown to bits by advances in nanotechnology...
Actually for the arcology/zaibatsu to exist will require nanotechnology and several other technologies to become practical. If we don't develop then the entire process is fall down because the resource base won't expand as fast as the need. Without the technology there is no way to address the need.
It would provide large family-owned corporations with even more interesting politics than they might currently posess, that's for sure.
Just remember, 20 generations is effectively billions. Consider that society when it has moved off planet based societies and begun to process extra-planetary resources. Lifetimes potentially moving toward the 500 year mark, genetic engineering to build custom chimeras. Consider the potential for ark's with artificial wombs, stem cell management, and gene banks.
An alternative may be that the generation gap asserts itself with a vengeance. Dad and Jr. can't get along - what about Dad and the 17th?
Well that would depend on a family by family basis. In general what one can say is that it will build a social structure where children visit their grandparents for much farther than through their teens. And on for the great grandparent...
Instead of isolating vertically, societies isolate horizontally. Lots of parallel institutions with mandatory minimum and mandatory retirement ages.
Won't fly, but I'd like to hear your description of the driving forces...
Kids born in years between large bumps end up caught on the edge - perpetually too old for the ones behind, too young to ever be accepted in the society born before them.
What 'large bumps'? Considering that most generations will be 20-30 years apart in age (at least at first, expect the age between generations to extend outward). In addition the additional storage of culture will act as a mediating affect.
So all this is fine, but I dislike saying that this is what "will happen."
So be it. Remember, something must happen. It will happen as a result of cause/effect and random events.
I tend to agree with you - but I also remember that in the 70's we had predictions of world disaster by the 00's. Not quite there yet. Still Malthus has to be right in the long run...
I'm not predicting disaster, a slow lingering drown on ones own waste. ____________________________________________________________________ Before a larger group can see the virtue of an idea, a smaller group must first understand it. "Stranger Suns" George Zebrowski The Armadillo Group ,::////;::-. James Choate Austin, Tx /:'///// ``::>/|/ ravage@ssz.com www.ssz.com .', |||| `/( e\ 512-451-7087 -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- --------------------------------------------------------------------
dmolnar wrote:
Slanted Truths: Essays on Gaia, Symbiosis, and Evolution L. Margulis, D. Sagan (yes that Sagan, which should id that Margulis :) ISBN 0-387-94927-5
Onto the to-skim pile - thanks.
Margulis is always worth reading. "Symbiosis and the cell evolution" was a huge eyeopener for me when I read it about 3 years ago - not so much for the symbiotic origin of Eukaryotes (which is pretty much orthodoxy these days & was taught to me as the standard idea back in the 1970s) as for all the biogeochemical implications. "Five Kingdoms" is a fun overview of LAWKI - a good read.
It wasn't that long ago that Sherry Turkle's _Life on the Screen_ was supposed to be *the* account of how "we" were going to relate in cyberspace. Except that who uses MUDs anymore?
My daughter sometimes! She's 11 now - but bumped into them a year or so ago. A few days after that I found her installing a telnet server on our W98 machine...
Can you imagine a latter-day Gandhi who exhorts people to move back to the cities to live with each other again? No? Why?
I can easily imagine that - somewhere between Jane Jacobs and Paolo Soleri and Bill Mollison.
Yes? Why arcologies and not Gandhi?
Why not both? See "Life and Death of the Great American Cities", "Arcologies" and "Permaculture" by the authors mentioned above (Of course nearly all contributors to Cypherpunks would find Soleri & Mollison to be evil wimpish leftites - but they ought to like Jacobs).
An alternative may be that the generation gap asserts itself with a vengeance. Dad and Jr. can't get along - what about Dad and the 17th? Instead of isolating vertically, societies isolate horizontally. Lots of parallel institutions with mandatory minimum and mandatory retirement ages.
Remember, if we manage to get ourselves an indefinite lifespan (as opposed to a mildly stretched one) then old people won't be *old* any more.
Kids born in years between large bumps end up caught on the edge - perpetually too old for the ones behind, too young to ever be accepted in the society born before them.
That more or less happens these days - there is a sort of lost generation born between the late 1950s & about 1970 who managed to be the first age cohort in 200 years who were poorer than their parents, at least in Britain (where else did punk rock come from?) Ken
On Fri, 26 Jan 2001, Ken Brown wrote:
Kids born in years between large bumps end up caught on the edge - perpetually too old for the ones behind, too young to ever be accepted in the society born before them.
That more or less happens these days - there is a sort of lost generation born between the late 1950s & about 1970 who managed to be the first age cohort in 200 years who were poorer than their parents, at least in Britain (where else did punk rock come from?)
Actually punk rock came from Germany, look up Klaus Nomi and Nina Hagen, and Canada, P. Orridge and Throbbing Gristle. Klaus is also the first 'famous' person to die from AIDS. Then it moved to NY & Cali. (The Germs fuckin' rule!). It didn't get to Britian until it had already been established a couple of years. ____________________________________________________________________ Before a larger group can see the virtue of an idea, a smaller group must first understand it. "Stranger Suns" George Zebrowski The Armadillo Group ,::////;::-. James Choate Austin, Tx /:'///// ``::>/|/ ravage@ssz.com www.ssz.com .', |||| `/( e\ 512-451-7087 -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- --------------------------------------------------------------------
Right of course about Nina Hagen et al. Though the argument about an age cohort still works (& in fact could be extended to include the German industrial rock bands & their artier (& much funnier) US followers from Akron (*) But then I could argue that a lot of British punk rock from 1976/7 actually sounded very, very different from the continental & North American precursors. A lot less sophisticated, less art-school (although a lot of the practitioners were at art schools!), less pills & more beer, and they actually used English accents and working-class south-of-England accents at that. In fact that summed up a lot of the impact of the Clash, the Damned, the Sex Pistols & all the hundreds of less-well-remembered bands - they sounded working-class, which in those days just Wasn't Done if you came from within a hundred miles of London. And I could also argue that the musical roots of that kind of British "punk" didn't include those guys so much as the noisy, thrashy, stomping heavy bands of the early 1970s (people like Sweet & Slade who never got to the US I guess), Reggae (especially in its early Ska mode), football chants, oddities like Screaming Lord Sutch (his "L-O-N-D-O-N London!" from the late 60s isn't punk but it sounds like punk) and of course Hawkwind (honestly, just listen to the basslines). If there is a transatlantic component other than R&B (which is always there of course) back in the mid-1970s it was more likely to be Patti Smith or their older brother's Velvet's records. And of course you could quite truthfully remind me that a significant number of those famous punks were in fact middle-class university-educated fine-arts types who did just as many of the wrong sort of pills as their windy stadium rock predecessors (talking of which, how come you Americans still pay money to listen to that stuff ? :-) Ken Brown (*) and for that matter some of the kind of people who listened to Bruce Springsteen in his more depressing moments... before the Republican's irony module was unplugged & they started to think "Born in the USA" was some sort of anthem. Or the kind of people who listened to various noisy southern rock bands. Jim Choate wrote:
On Fri, 26 Jan 2001, Ken Brown wrote:
Kids born in years between large bumps end up caught on the edge - perpetually too old for the ones behind, too young to ever be accepted in the society born before them.
That more or less happens these days - there is a sort of lost generation born between the late 1950s & about 1970 who managed to be the first age cohort in 200 years who were poorer than their parents, at least in Britain (where else did punk rock come from?)
Actually punk rock came from Germany, look up Klaus Nomi and Nina Hagen, and Canada, P. Orridge and Throbbing Gristle. Klaus is also the first 'famous' person to die from AIDS. Then it moved to NY & Cali. (The Germs fuckin' rule!). It didn't get to Britian until it had already been established a couple of years.
____________________________________________________________________
Before a larger group can see the virtue of an idea, a smaller group must first understand it.
"Stranger Suns" George Zebrowski
The Armadillo Group ,::////;::-. James Choate Austin, Tx /:'///// ``::>/|/ ravage@ssz.com www.ssz.com .', |||| `/( e\ 512-451-7087 -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- --------------------------------------------------------------------
On Fri, 26 Jan 2001, Ken Brown wrote:
But then I could argue that a lot of British punk rock from 1976/7 actually sounded very, very different from the continental & North American precursors. A lot less sophisticated, less art-school (although a lot of the practitioners were at art schools!), less pills & more beer,
And Heroin. Yes, British music in general has a different 'timbre' to it.
impact of the Clash
Come on baby tell me, should I stay or should I go?
the Damned,
Yawn.
the Sex Pistols
Anarchy in the UK!, if don't mind the puke in the pocket...
days just Wasn't Done if you came from within a hundred miles of London.
You should listen to Social D's last live album. There's a comment in there about the Whiskey's parking lot and pussie piercings that's hilarious. Describes my experience in S. Texas in Houston to a T.
from the late 60s isn't punk but it sounds like punk) and of course Hawkwind (honestly, just listen to the basslines). If there is a
So, you're the one who stole my Orgone Accumulator? You know they started out as a front band for a sci-fi writer?
which, how come you Americans still pay money to listen to that stuff ?
I don't listen to the old stuff as much as the new stuff, Mindless Self Indulgence, DRI, CoC, Butthole Surfers (from here in Austin!), The Exploited (speaking of England), The Union Underground (though this is very industrial), or Mephisto Odyssey (ditto), Surf Punks, Sex Gang Children, Fugazi, Newlydeads, Napalm Death, The Cramps, Bush Tetra's, or GWAR for example. I also like Cirith Ungol but they're more head-banging. Though I still do have all those albums and break 'em out at parties. I find a lot of the under 25's have never heard this stuff (though they've heard of it). My fucking favorite punk band bar none is, Plastmatics. Wendy O. takes no prisoners (and clearly won't become one). May 'Rauls' rest in peace'. Americans are pack-rat's. As to The Boss and southern rock bands of any sort, I'll keep my peace. :) Tres Hombres. ____________________________________________________________________ Before a larger group can see the virtue of an idea, a smaller group must first understand it. "Stranger Suns" George Zebrowski The Armadillo Group ,::////;::-. James Choate Austin, Tx /:'///// ``::>/|/ ravage@ssz.com www.ssz.com .', |||| `/( e\ 512-451-7087 -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- --------------------------------------------------------------------
Jim Choate wrote:
from the late 60s isn't punk but it sounds like punk) and of course Hawkwind (honestly, just listen to the basslines). If there is a
So, you're the one who stole my Orgone Accumulator? You know they started out as a front band for a sci-fi writer?
("sci-fi"? what is this "sci-fi"? We know of no "sci-fi"?) If you mean Michael Moorcock I think they were fans of his and he wrote some lyrics for them & later on he did go on stage with them now and again but I don't think it's true to say they *started* that way or that they were just a "front band" for him. (Unlike the short-lived and semi-fictional Deep Fix, which may have included a lot of Hawkwind members but was Moorcock's band) Mike Moorcock's living in Texas now. And writing cowboy stories. Well, they are as much like cowboy stories as some of the his other stuff was like sf Some reviews at: http://sfsite.com/~silverag/texas.html And a not-at-all spellchecked interview with Colin Greenland at: http://freespace.virgin.net/g.hurry/mm_int.htm Michael Moorcock: The part of Texas I'm moving to is more like Califonia, its full of old hippies and mad computer people. In fact our entire estate is run by old hippies. All of them are lunitics, sort of rolling up joints and telling you how they dug New Worlds in the 60s. I mean its amazing to me. I find the people who are most interested - they got it from the SF and theyre trying to make it real thats what interests me. Theres a story that the Americans never quite got the space ship they wanted right because they were trying to make it look like a Buck Rogers space ship. Which I believe because thats how a space ship should look. Colin Greenland: So science fiction does predict the future? Michael Moorcock: No, it creates it which is slightly different. Its full of looney SF fans. When I went up to see 2001, 2001 ways to fall asleap!, and the NASA people were out there and this is probably what was wrong with the film - the NASA people were out there and they were deeply interested in the science, as if they would really land a space ship on Jupiter. I cant do with all that. PSFG : In the early days you used to do a lot of stuff with certain bands, like Hawkwind and Blue Oyster Cult. How did that come about? Michael Moorcock: It just happened PSFG : So did they like approach you or did you go there or what? Michael Moorcock: Hawkwind based their title on the Hawkmoon books that was the start of it and I didnt meet them for the first few months. I lived in Ladbrook Grove, everything happened in Ladbrook Grove in the sixties and seventies. I mean it was just nice and I happened to live in Ladbrook Grove and it all happened around me. You couldnt actually move for bloody Rock and Roll bands. Ken Brown
On Mon, 29 Jan 2001, Ken Brown wrote:
If you mean Michael Moorcock I think they were fans of his and he wrote some lyrics for them & later on he did go on stage with them now and again but I don't think it's true to say they *started* that way or that they were just a "front band" for him. (Unlike the short-lived and semi-fictional Deep Fix, which may have included a lot of Hawkwind members but was Moorcock's band)
In Michaels own words... http://www.thing.de/projekte/future/moorcin.htm (or go to google using 'hawkwind michael moorcock' and take 2nd link) The only book of his I ever read was the Hawkwind one. It was ok if you were stoned enough :) ____________________________________________________________________ Before a larger group can see the virtue of an idea, a smaller group must first understand it. "Stranger Suns" George Zebrowski The Armadillo Group ,::////;::-. James Choate Austin, Tx /:'///// ``::>/|/ ravage@ssz.com www.ssz.com .', |||| `/( e\ 512-451-7087 -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- --------------------------------------------------------------------
Choate:>
The only book of his I ever read was the Hawkwind one. It was ok if you were stoned enough :)
'Dancers at the end of time' is his best, far as I'm concerned. Don't know if it requires psychotropic substances. 'Spose it could't do any harm. Tiarnan
And I could also argue that the musical roots of that kind of British "punk" didn't include those guys so much as the noisy, thrashy, stomping heavy bands of the early 1970s (people like Sweet & Slade who never got
Sweet made it here. As did Slade. -- A quote from Petro's Archives: ********************************************** "As someone who has worked both in private industry and in academia, whenever I hear about academics wanting to teach ethics to people in business, I want to puke."--Thomas Sowell.
Kids born in years between large bumps end up caught on the edge - perpetually too old for the ones behind, too young to ever be accepted in the society born before them.
That more or less happens these days - there is a sort of lost generation born between the late 1950s & about 1970 who managed to be the first age cohort in 200 years who were poorer than their parents, at least in Britain (where else did punk rock come from?)
Long Island. The Ramones. -- A quote from Petro's Archives: ********************************************** "As someone who has worked both in private industry and in academia, whenever I hear about academics wanting to teach ethics to people in business, I want to puke."--Thomas Sowell.
At 12:23 AM -0800 1/30/01, petro wrote:
Kids born in years between large bumps end up caught on the edge - perpetually too old for the ones behind, too young to ever be accepted in the society born before them.
That more or less happens these days - there is a sort of lost generation born between the late 1950s & about 1970 who managed to be the first age cohort in 200 years who were poorer than their parents, at least in Britain (where else did punk rock come from?)
Long Island.
The Ramones.
The explanation for this came from a band that is not primarily punk, The Tubes: "White punks on dope." --Tim May -- Timothy C. May tcmay@got.net Corralitos, California Political: Co-founder Cypherpunks/crypto anarchy/Cyphernomicon Technical: physics/soft errors/Smalltalk/Squeak/agents/games/Go Personal: b.1951/UCSB/Intel '74-'86/retired/investor/motorcycles/guns
At 12:23 AM -0800 1/30/01, petro wrote:
Kids born in years between large bumps end up caught on the edge - perpetually too old for the ones behind, too young to ever be accepted in the society born before them.
That more or less happens these days - there is a sort of lost generation born between the late 1950s & about 1970 who managed to be the first age cohort in 200 years who were poorer than their parents, at least in Britain (where else did punk rock come from?)
Long Island.
The Ramones.
German Garage punk, late 60s. they were influencing the US and UK around the same time.
At 11:02 AM -0500 1/21/01, dmolnar wrote:
On Sat, 20 Jan 2001, Jim Choate wrote:
(1) - books on future worlds and spaces: in particular, those that explore social, moral, political, technical, ethical issues (to be science fiction), or those that merely explore worlds (to be fantasy)
I see the utility in fiction to tell us what is most likely not to happen.
"If I name a future, then it won't happen" - ?
This reminds me of the view that SF writers are trying to "predict the future." I don't think picturing "the future" and then being "wrong" or "right" about that is what fiction is usually about. More often about commenting on the present.
I used to read a _lot_ of science fiction. (Many reasons why I read much less now.) What SF did for me was to "immerse me" in various possible-but-not-necessarily-probable alternative futures, a kind of way of allowing a person to think that computers might one day be ubiquitous, that national borders might be undermined by technology, that alternative social organizations might arise. Heinlein and his editor, John Campbell, used to refer to this as "if those goes on..." Take some trend and extrapolate it. "If this goes on..." Highways, for example, in Heinlein's "The Roads Must Roll." Vinge's "True Names," extrapolating trends already becoming apparent to some in the 1970s. And so on. The most important thing reading SF does for people, IMO, is to disabuse them of the notion that there is "a" future. "What will _the_ future look like?" seems silly when a sheaf of possible futures is "what really is." Those who read a lot of good SF are more likely to understand this point, that futures are made, not pre-ordained, and that futures may hinge on very subtle points. (Reading a lot of "what if" novels helps. A recent one I enjoyed a great deal is "Resurrection Day," where the Cuban Missile Crisis escalated on a single hinge point--attacking Cuban bases after the U-2 was shot down on Saturday--and a nuclear war followed. There's also a movie out in theaters now, "Thirteen Days," about these events.) One reason I read very little SF these days is that much of it is repetitive, or is set so far in the future as to be non-interesting to me, etc. Plus, the usual effects of aging. SF novels are less interesting at age 30 than at age 15, even less so by age 40, etc. Sometimes some gems still appear. Of course, each person has their own taste. For my taste, the best SF I have read in many years is by an obscure writer named David Zindell. "Neverness," "The Broken God," "The Wild," and "The War in Heaven." Each is a thick, dense novel. All set in the same distant future universe, much like "Dune," but better (IMO). Unfortunately, all are out of print. I buy up copies of the paperbacks when they show up in my local used bookstore. (Amazon wants $18 plus some handling fee for used copies!) Look for "Neverness" and/or "The Broken God." The latter builds on the developments of the former, but can be read on its own. The other two novels really need to have the foundations laid by the earlier novels.
I am reminded of the Salon article "Twilight of the crypto-geeks." http://www.salonmag.com/tech/feature/2000/04/13/libertarians/index1.html
Well, what do you expect from Salon? They might as well have Paulina Borsook writing about the decline of capitalism and the selfishness of corporations. Or have David Brin expound on the need for cameras everywhere. Declan can comment on this, too, but it's clear that editors like "Hegelian" set-ups of conflict (thesis, antithesis, synthesis). So phrases like "Twilight of the ...." resonate in various ways, both Hegelian and Wagnerian. The phrases suggest "end of an era" when in fact there is no such end. So Zimmerman is not a libertarian? We knew this in 1991. So Bruce Schneier thinks crypto is overrated? It is, in many ways. And so on. "Twilight of the crypto-geeks" indeed.
- books on cryptocommunities, where a major part of the plot revolves around people that are "cryptoheads" and for which cryptography and technology is a major part of their lifestyle (people who somewhat live, breathe and eat cryptography).
Ugh. The thought of a community that is so paranoid it exist through ubiquitous crypto is a bit self-contradictory I think. Who would you trust to make the technology?
Who said anything about the community being paranoid? You can use cryptography to do new things beyond hiding data, you know. Probably the most pressing would be authentication and controlling the data presented to the world about you. Digital signatures and credentials.
BTW, "True Names" was just such a book. The participants were unknown to each other. (Vinge chose not to discuss the crypto in detail, wisely.)
Now you can go further and ask "what if a society had digital auction protools?" or "what if selling your CPU cycles was normal and easy?" or "what if everyone knew about time-lock puzzles and time-release crypto and could use it in everyday life?" or "what if the elections went according to protocol X?"
Even further, what if a society had the will and the capability to use all of these crypto protocols just as soon as they were developed? (For instance, posit that the provable security problem and the protocol assembly problem are solved. You think of something you want to do, you can put it together yourself and have it work.)
These were some of the things I was putting into my Great American Unfinished Novel, between 1988 and 1991, when I finally abandoned it. (No, lest anyone ask, I _won't_ send copies or excerpts out. So don't even ask. :-) )
How would anyone have the time to make the horde of technologies this sort of society requires?
PGP is here now, though of course no one uses it. PKI seems to be driven by something, e-commerce maybe. Academics and corporate research are looking for new and fun things to do with math. Sometimes they hire students to implement those fun things. Sometimes other people read the papers and implement the fun things themselves.
Where did anonymous remailers come from?
Indeed. --Tim May -- Timothy C. May tcmay@got.net Corralitos, California Political: Co-founder Cypherpunks/crypto anarchy/Cyphernomicon Technical: physics/soft errors/Smalltalk/Squeak/agents/games/Go Personal: b.1951/UCSB/Intel '74-'86/retired/investor/motorcycles/guns
I want to expand on a point I made here: At 9:42 AM -0800 1/21/01, Tim May wrote:
At 11:02 AM -0500 1/21/01, dmolnar wrote:
I am reminded of the Salon article "Twilight of the crypto-geeks." http://www.salonmag.com/tech/feature/2000/04/13/libertarians/index1.html
Well, what do you expect from Salon? They might as well have Paulina Borsook writing about the decline of capitalism and the selfishness of corporations. Or have David Brin expound on the need for cameras everywhere.
Declan can comment on this, too, but it's clear that editors like "Hegelian" set-ups of conflict (thesis, antithesis, synthesis). So phrases like "Twilight of the ...." resonate in various ways, both Hegelian and Wagnerian. The phrases suggest "end of an era" when in fact there is no such end.
And of course this "thesis-anthesis-synthesis" viewpoint, or, more simply, the "battle" viewpoint, is precisely why "Wired" put Cypherpunks on the cover of their second issue. And why "the little offshore rig pirates who could" are featured in a more recent issue. Conflict sells magazines. So small groups of people are characterized as the vanguard of a new revolutionary movement ("Crypto Rebels"), as the forward scouts, as revolutionaries. "Forbes" even put Sameer Parekh on the cover of their mag, full face, with some tag line about how "This man wants to overthrow the U.S. government." That's attention I'm happy _not_ to have gotten, frankly. Dave Mandl, who used to be on the list in the beginning, called this the "freak of the week" effect. And people in movements use this media attention to get their message out. Both sides use each other. We all have heard the tales. (It's just useful to remind folks here on this list that the same thing happens with our kinds of interests.) All of this has been seen many times before, in contexts ranging from protests about the Vietnam War to abortion rights marches and on and on. Phony conflicts are set up and a few ringleaders get a lot of ink. The more outrageous their comments, the more face time they get. And such a story can segue nicely into a follow-up piece a few years later, about the "Twilight of the Crypto Geeks" or about how Vietnam War protestors are now making big bugs on Wall Street. Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis. The moral (all drama has a moral...)? Believe neither the initial hype nor the inevitable analysis of what went wrong, why the revolution never happened, now disillusionment set in, and so on. Drama 101 as taught by Herr Doktor Professor Hegel, with dissenting comments from hs former sidekick, Fred N. --Tim May -- Timothy C. May tcmay@got.net Corralitos, California Political: Co-founder Cypherpunks/crypto anarchy/Cyphernomicon Technical: physics/soft errors/Smalltalk/Squeak/agents/games/Go Personal: b.1951/UCSB/Intel '74-'86/retired/investor/motorcycles/guns
At 10:06 AM -0800 1/21/01, Tim May wrote:
And such a story can segue nicely into a follow-up piece a few years later, about the "Twilight of the Crypto Geeks" or about how Vietnam War protestors are now making big bugs on Wall Street. Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis.
"Big _bucks_ on Wall Street." This was not some intentional pun, just some kind of weird mental slip. Strange. (I sometimes make the usual homonym errors, such as using "their" for "there," even when I know full well the correct usage of each and spot the errors .) --Tim May -- Timothy C. May tcmay@got.net Corralitos, California Political: Co-founder Cypherpunks/crypto anarchy/Cyphernomicon Technical: physics/soft errors/Smalltalk/Squeak/agents/games/Go Personal: b.1951/UCSB/Intel '74-'86/retired/investor/motorcycles/guns
On Sun, 21 Jan 2001, Tim May wrote:
And such a story can segue nicely into a follow-up piece a few years later, about the "Twilight of the Crypto Geeks" or about how Vietnam War protestors are now making big bugs on Wall Street. Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis.
That would explain the rise of the biotech stocks. Now if they would just start teaching the Mad Sciences in the schools again. We need more giant bugs with the brains of a great ape skittering down the streets of Washington DC. (Other than the congressmen.) "Mad?? I'm not Mad! A little miffed maybe, but not *mad*! I am a miffed scientist!" alan@ctrl-alt-del.com | Note to AOL users: for a quick shortcut to reply Alan Olsen | to my mail, just hit the ctrl, alt and del keys. "In the future, everything will have its 15 minutes of blame."
On Sun, Jan 21, 2001 at 09:42:14AM -0800, Tim May wrote:
Declan can comment on this, too, but it's clear that editors like "Hegelian" set-ups of conflict (thesis, antithesis, synthesis). So phrases like "Twilight of the ...." resonate in various ways, both Hegelian and Wagnerian. The phrases suggest "end of an era" when in fact there is no such end.
All true, of course. It's even worse than that: The more a journalist writes, the more he feels compelled to simplify conflicts and reporting into what can be described in one short paragraph. Assignment editors and copy editors generally encourage this trend, and let's face it: We have a lot of smart people reading our stuff, but a lot of idiots as well. Simplification sells -- and I'm not even talking about TV! I find myself struggling against this, and occasionally have to make an effort to unpack a sentence, to make it more descriptive. All this is to say that I wouldn't spend too much time worrying about that Salon article. Parts are true, but others are so simplified as to be meaningless. -Declan
It's strange that there are so few science fiction books that talk about cryptography at all, except maybe at a very low level of detail and sophistication. The only book I can remember that even mentions public-key cryptography is Vernor Vinge's _A Fire Upon the Deep_. Does anyone have other examples?
On Sun, 21 Jan 2001, Wei Dai wrote:
It's strange that there are so few science fiction books that talk about cryptography at all, except maybe at a very low level of detail and sophistication. The only book I can remember that even mentions public-key
It's also strange that there are relatively few science fiction books which talk about math. There are some noted short story collections (_The Mathematical Magpie_ and its sequel), short stories (Asimov's story about rediscovering "graphitics," Heinlein's "And He Built A Crooked House"), and authors (Rudy Rucker), but nowhere near the volume of SF based on physics. Perhaps it's that there are fewer people familiar with math than with physics - which leads to fewer people writing such fiction and a smaller market for it. The same is true for crypto, except more so.
cryptography is Vernor Vinge's _A Fire Upon the Deep_. Does anyone have other examples?
The obvious one would be Stephenson's _Cryptonomicon_. I wonder if Greg Egan has written anything in this vein; he seems to have interests in computer science, and he even had an alternate history/worldline travelling story about Turing in Asimov's last year ("Oracle"). -David
At 1:07 AM -0500 1/22/01, dmolnar wrote:
On Sun, 21 Jan 2001, Wei Dai wrote:
It's strange that there are so few science fiction books that talk about cryptography at all, except maybe at a very low level of detail and sophistication. The only book I can remember that even mentions public-key
It's also strange that there are relatively few science fiction books which talk about math. There are some noted short story collections (_The Mathematical Magpie_ and its sequel), short stories (Asimov's story about rediscovering "graphitics," Heinlein's "And He Built A Crooked House"), and authors (Rudy Rucker), but nowhere near the volume of SF based on physics.
Erik Nylund has at least two novels which are centered around mathematics: "Signal to Noise" and "A Signal Shattered." The novels by Zindell which I mentioned this morning are also mathcentric. A collection of math SF and fantasy stories I read as a kid had a big influence on me. I don't recall the name of the collection, but it included some of Arthur C. Clarke's "Tales from the White Hart" stories involving a Moebius strip wall, for example. And a story about the Devil making a bet with a mathematician, and the bet involves Fermat's Last Theorem. The Devil ends up being hooked by the problem. There's a good reason more SF stories are centered around physics. Reductionism aside, hysics is what gives us space ships, interstellar travel, colonies on other worlds, etc. The stories centered around math tend to be "gimmicky," like the "And He Built a Crooked House" story Dave mentions. And most of the "physics" in most SF novels is of the most simplistic sort, e.g., nuclear reactors (in some old 40s stories), hyperspace (with the hoary "imagine two dots on this handkerchief" explanations such as we find in "Starman Jones" and dozens of other such novels). (And this handkerchief explanation of "jumps" is really more akin to Riemannian geometry and topology than to actual physics, so it arguably qualifies as "math." Most of the physics is gotten through in a couple of paragraphs. Probably about the same coverage math gets. But the artifacts created with physics tend to be central players in novels and stories--being the space ships and lunar colonies and the like--and so the impression is natural that physics plays a larger role than math in SF. Heinlein frequently threw in references to tensor calculus, log tables, slipsticks, etc. --Tim May -- Timothy C. May tcmay@got.net Corralitos, California Political: Co-founder Cypherpunks/crypto anarchy/Cyphernomicon Technical: physics/soft errors/Smalltalk/Squeak/agents/games/Go Personal: b.1951/UCSB/Intel '74-'86/retired/investor/motorcycles/guns
On Mon, Jan 22, 2001 at 01:07:20AM -0500, dmolnar wrote:
The obvious one would be Stephenson's _Cryptonomicon_. I wonder if Greg Egan has written anything in this vein; he seems to have interests in computer science, and he even had an alternate history/worldline travelling story about Turing in Asimov's last year ("Oracle").
I've read almost all of Greg Egan's novels and collections, and don't recall anything that talks about cryptography. Here's a link to the Oracle story, btw: http://www.netspace.net.au/~gregegan/MISC/ORACLE/Oracle.html.
On Mon, 22 Jan 2001, dmolnar wrote:
It's also strange that there are relatively few science fiction books which talk about math. There are some noted short story collections (_The Mathematical Magpie_ and its sequel), short stories (Asimov's story about rediscovering "graphitics," Heinlein's "And He Built A Crooked House"), and authors (Rudy Rucker), but nowhere near the volume of SF based on physics.
Perhaps it's that there are fewer people familiar with math than with physics - which leads to fewer people writing such fiction and a smaller market for it. The same is true for crypto, except more so.
Start with, Mathenauts: Tales of Mathematical Wonder ed. Rudy Rucker ISBN 0-87795-891-2 0-87795-890-4 (pbk.) Stories by, Rucker, Asimov, Kagan, Bear, Berman, Dnieprov, Gardner, Watson, Cramer, Zebrowski, Hofstadter, Sakers, Orr, Laidlaw, Sheckley, Gross, Pohl, & Benford. There was supposed to be a second volume, don't know if it ever saw the light of day... Most of Ruckers fiction is related to math/physics, Spacetime Donuts White Light (What is Cantor's Continuum Problem?) The Fifty-sixth Franz Kafka The Sex Sphere Master of Space and Time ____________________________________________________________________ Before a larger group can see the virtue of an idea, a smaller group must first understand it. "Stranger Suns" George Zebrowski The Armadillo Group ,::////;::-. James Choate Austin, Tx /:'///// ``::>/|/ ravage@ssz.com www.ssz.com .', |||| `/( e\ 512-451-7087 -====~~mm-'`-```-mm --'- --------------------------------------------------------------------
participants (15)
-
Alan Olsen -
Bill Stewart -
Declan McCullagh -
dmolnar -
Foobulus Baracculus -
Jim Choate -
Jim Choate
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Jim Choate -
Ken Brown -
ocorrain＠esatclear.ie -
petro -
Ray Dillinger -
snit -
Tim May -
Wei Dai