Agents, Spiders, Linda, and BlackNet

[Timothy C. May]

Key Phrases: agents, spiders, linda, blacknet, indexing, hierarchy,
alternatives to hierarchy, emergent indexing, aptical foddering, tuple
spaces, virtual communities, shared environments

A swirl of terms, related in some interesting ways. This mini-essay is
inspired by the debate whether BlackNet is or is not a meaningful
instantiation of a data haven.

How can information be retrieved from the Net? Is organization needed? Who
does the organizing?

As the ARPANet evolved, under various names, and as UUCP and other
machine-to-machine protocols evolved, the Usenet came into being. The first
"message pool." A basic classification existed, mostly of fairly reputable
top-level topics (sci, soc, comp, etc.). Then came "alt," largely created
by our own John Gilmore. There are of course now more than 20,000
newsgroups. Searches and greps of the newsgroup list are a way to find
potentially relevant newsgroups for posting a message or finding messages
of interest.

(As is well-known, the Usenet Cabal gets its orders from the Bilderbergers
as to which newsgroups fit in with New World Order sanctioned
epistemologies.)

Some are saying there is an alternate method. With the advent of search
engines which can index messages on the Usenet (and in Webspace, but the
idea is the same), why not this alternative: put your message in a bottle
and just throw it into the "sea" of possible messages. Let search engines
find the messages of interest (modulo a day or two of latency, as the
spiders reach the space where the message was placed). No newsgroups
needed. The "keywords" list at the beginning of this message would help the
search process, though of course the body of the message should have
sufficient keywords; a formal keyword list or field serves mainly to remind
the author to add some keywords (Schelling points) that he might not have
included in his message per se.

Conversations and threads would take place in a virtual meeting place, even
more so than today. This is of course largely happening already, and even
more clearly with mailing lists which get cc:ed to other mailing lists,
e.g, the way the e-spam list forwards some of our stuff to their list and
then replies pull in the orginal author.

(The connection with "Linda" is the connection with David Gelernter's
"Linda" system, based on "tuple spaces" into which messages are placed. A
kind of sea of messages in this tuple space. The connection with the
Unabomber is left as an exercise for the reader.)

Sometimes hierarchy is useful. Library call numbers and indices make
finding books easier than searching at random; however, sufficiently fast
"library crawlers" could find even randomly-placed books. (And friends of
mine are working on small RF "localizers" which, if small enough, could be
placed on books. One could type in "Find "Robinson Crusoe," and a book
anywhere in the library could chip "Here I am." Obviously the problem is
more easily solvable for data.)

With the rise of more powerful search engines, of distributed geodesic
networks, and with the decentralization of naming power, I see Linda-type
seas of objects as more and more attractive.

This helps BlackNet-type information markets and virtual data havens.

Just some ideas. Nothing new, to me at least. But I thought some of the
newer list members might not have seen some of these ideas, part of the
assumed culture to we crypto anarchists.

--Tim May


Boycott "Big Brother Inside" software!
We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, we know that that ain't allowed.
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
tcmay at got.net  408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA  | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
Licensed Ontologist         | black markets, collapse of governments.
"National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."