Is Cyberspace Rich Enough?

[Wei Dai]

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> [deleted]

> But can we do more? One of my own wishes is to see hundreds (nay,
> thousands!) of remailers, as these act as "teleportation booths" which
> can dramatically increase connectivity. (They can increase the
> connectivity in a different way that just straight connections
> can...they "stitch together" otherwise visibly-connected regions with
> unobservable connections, a desirable thing.)

I'm not sure that thousands of remailers will ever exist.  There will 
be little incentive for people to use small remailers, which, because 
of their low traffic, add little untracibility per additional unit of 
latency and monetary costs compared to larger remailers.  Larger 
remailers will also likely have better reputations for 
trustworthiness.  The economics seem to indicate that (if a market 
of remailers is ever established) there will be a small number (less than 
a hundred) of large remailers that are well used and profitable, and 
a larger number of small remailers that are nearly never used.

> [deleted]
 
> * Web access remailers. Like the "anonymous anonymous ftp," why not
> explore combining Web systems with remailers? (Not so great for
> browsing, of course, but there should be some interesting
> possibilities.)

Remailers don't seem to be a good way to access the WWW, which is 
much more efficient when done interactively.  On the other hand, my 
proposed Pipe-net would seem to be perfect for this, and other 
communications that need both untracibility and low latency.

Wei Dai

P.S. People are more likely to respond to things they don't agree 
with (as I did here).  If you write something and no one responds, 
it probably means that everyone except the lurkers agree with you, so 
take it as a good sign.


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E-mail: Wei Dai <weidai at eskimo.com>   URL: "http://www.eskimo.com/~weidai"
=================== Exponential Increase of Complexity ===================
--> singularity --> atoms --> macromolecules --> biological evolution
--> central nervous systems --> symbolic communication --> homo sapiens
--> digital computers --> internetworking --> close-coupled automation
--> broadband brain-to-net connections --> artificial intelligence
--> distributed consciousness --> group minds --> ? ? ?