anonymous remailers, network computer, singles sites, etc.
well, nobody has commented on this a whole lot here from what I can tell, but the net is now *plastered* with anonymous remailers in various forms. it's definitely not going away. we now have mail.yahoo.com which can create an alias in a few minutes. also, www.hotmail.com and there are others. one could argue the Net PC (NC) is already here!! web TV allows much software to be run on it (btw, does anyone know if it runs java? if so, I'd say that's definitely a NC). the point is that sites such as games.yahoo.com etc. are essentially sites in which a web site is indistinguishable from software. "the network is the computer". larry ellison went home with his tail between his legs on the NC idea, but what he doesn't realize is that it is actually here en masse. (just not so much in the corporate arena as he envisioned) an interesting subset of anonymity is being used very intensely with online personals!! here's a sophisticated example http://personals.swoon.com/e_personals/static/help.html#e-mail they have a lot of info on how their site acts as a remailer for email messages. this is a very "slick" online magazine clearly showing huge amount of production cash which I personally haven't heard too much about. a bit risque for some peoples tastes, but very intriguing application of cyberspace one never would have dreamt up just a few moons ago. incidentally, there are bazillions of singles sites out there on the internet. its another application of the net one wouldn't necesarily have foreseen, but it really makes sense. hooking up people with people. a strange "killer app" of the net judging by how many there are. there's less "romantic" types of this thing too, for just hooking up people with similar interests, such as www.icq.com and www.cyberfriends.com one tasteful/decent place to start for singles sites is http://www.zdnet.com/yil/content/mag/9803/gurlsites.html ultimately the internet population is starting to discover that the key thing it does is related to *communities*....
OK, I can't resist this one...
an interesting subset of anonymity is being used very intensely with online personals!! here's a sophisticated example
http://personals.swoon.com/e_personals/static/help.html#e-mail
they have a lot of info on how their site acts as a remailer for email messages. this is a very "slick" online magazine clearly showing huge amount of production cash which I personally haven't heard too much about. a bit risque for some peoples tastes, but very intriguing application of cyberspace one never would have dreamt up just a few moons ago.
I think maybe you need to have your dreaming apparatus checked out. As far as I know, the very *first* anonymous remailing system on the Net, which was created long before there was a Cypherpunks list and long before there was a Worldwide Web, was the anonymous posting/reply system for alt.sex.bondage. It was quickly followed by systems for a few other groups. Especially prominent among these were the anonymous contact systems for alt.personals and alt.personals.bondage. Actually, I may have the order wrong. In any case, the systems were definitely well established by 1990, and I seem to remember them starting up in around 1988. Since they also predate things like DejaNews, and since my memory of those days is clouded by age and general dissipation, it's would take some resarch to find out exactly when they were set up, and I don't think I care to do it. I believe that these systems were the inspiration for anon@penet.fi. They sort of fell apart when the PENET remailer came into being. Of course, these weren't truly anonymous systems in the sense that the Cypherpunks remailers are, or in the sense that Zero Knowledge is setting up, but they were probably more secure than the remailing services on most personals Web sites. ... and newspaper personal ad sections have been providing a similar service with paper mail for longer than I've been alive. Probably for centuries. There's actually a closely related "identity escrow" application that I expect to see soon, if it hasn't already been done. People who meet for anonymous sexual encounters are putting themselves at increased risk of assault, murder, and that sort of thing, but typically don't want to tell their mothers where they'll be. A system that could be used, under carefully controlled conditions, to find out who they were with when they disappeared, would act as a deterrent and might provide a bit more peace of mind. -- John B.
participants (2)
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John Bashinski -
Vladimir Z. Nuri