"So it's best to ignore the "unwashed masses" and their inability to understand untraceable money." That's precisely the wrong conclusion, assuming everything else you wrote in this post is correct. If one accepts that most young people don't understand the notion or implications of truely digital "cash", then one's tactics must change considerably. If de-empowering some aspects of the State is your goal, a new constrant is that your methods must not rely on anyone giving a crap about your goals, or possibly of digital cash. This does not mean that these ideas are destined to flounder, but instead it may mean that for them to have life they must find it somewhere where people can understand their usefulness. For instance, I can easily see some notions of untraceable digital cash finding applications over certain kinds of P2P networks. But if you continue to discuss the issue in the abstract, or purely in the context of de-stating the state, the youngins won't pay attention long enough for them to recognize why this may be useful to them. Eventually, however, they'll find the need for these ideas and do their homework. -TD

From: Tim May To: cypherpunks@lne.com Subject: Re: A 'Funky A.T.M.' Lets You Pay for Purchases Made Online Date: Fri, 25 Jul 2003 00:46:09 -0700

On Thursday, July 24, 2003, at 07:12 PM, Steve Furlong wrote:

...

On Thursday 24 July 2003 15:50, Tim May wrote:

...

In fact, "digicash" strongly suggests David Chaum's "Digicash,"

That assumes the reader or listener has heard of Digicash, or of Chaum. Not an assumption I'd be comfortable making.

Agreed, making the assumption that readers here have heard of Chaum or understand the basic idea of blinded transactions (or dining cryptographers, or oblivious transfer, or any of the other building blocks) is no longer warranted. I expect many of the persyns of peircing now spewing on the list are, like, thinking "that's, like, _so_ nineties."

As for thinking very general readers or listeners, those not even on the list, are capable of understanding Chaum or Digicash, that's a fool's errand. The average nontechnical person knows nothing about how crypto works, and attempting to explain a DC-Net or a blinded transfer is no more useful to them than just telling them the currency is based on "magic beans."

The point is not that laymen need to understand Digicash, but that calling things like ATM cards and Visa cards "digicash" does a disservice to the important ideas of why Chaum's and Brands' and similar systems worked.

Hey, maybe it's actually the case that some of the people here who are referring to electronic debit cards as "digicash" just don't have a clue about what blinding is and why it makes for truly untraceable tokens.

...

I tend to use "electronic money" when discussing coin- or account-based systems, anonymous or not, with the unwashed masses. It conveys the meaning well enough to serve as an opening wedge to a better description, and it's general enough that it shouldn't offend the sensibilities of those few people who do understand the subject in depth. And it hasn't been gobbled up by any company, so far as I know.

I stopped any efforts to explain the true importance of electronic/digital money/cash a long time ago. A waste of time. Not too surprising, as getting even the basic idea requires some passing familiarity with things like how RSA works. When I read Chaum's 1985 CACM paper I already knew about RSA and "hard" directions for problems (trapdoor functions), and yet I still had to read and reread the paper and draw little pictures for myself.

Thinking someone can absorb the gist via a purely verbal description is just not plausible. I have seen David Chaum attempt to do this with an audience of computer professionals....my impression from the later questions from the audience is that his explanation simply didn't get them over the "hump" to the stage of realizing the key concept. No more so than popularizations of relativity actually ever got the masses to understand relativity.

There is much that could be said about whether this difficulty is why we don't have untraceable, Chaum-style forms of money (I don't think this is the reason). Regardless, wishing won't make it so, and so wishing that people would "grok" the importance of blinding without having spent at least a few hours brushing up on RSA and exponentiation and all that and then following an explanation very, very closely....well, wishing won't make it so.

So it's best to ignore the "unwashed masses" and their inability to understand untraceable money.

More troubling is that so many _here_ don't seem to "get it."

--Tim May

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