"So Says I", 10/24 ISIG Meeting

Robert Hettinga rah at shipwright.com
Thu Oct 24 11:12:41 PDT 1996



--- begin forwarded text


Date: Thu, 24 Oct 1996 13:58:24 -0400 (EDT)
X-Sender: mcooley at tiac.net
Mime-Version: 1.0
To: Robert Hettinga <rah at shipwright.com>
From: mcooley at nethorizons.com (Marianne Cooley)
Subject: "So Says I", 10/24 ISIG Meeting

fyi

>Date: Tue, 22 Oct 1996 15:45:27 -0400 (EDT)
>X-Sender: mcooley at tiac.net
>To: isig at bcs.org
>From: mcooley at nethorizons.com (Marianne Cooley)
>Subject: "So Says I", 10/24 ISIG Meeting
>Sender: owner-isig at bcs.org
>Precedence: bulk
>Reply-To: isig at bcs.org
>
>Join us for a great evening at MIT, Building 6, Room 120 for the latest ISIG
>meeting.  Here's the scoop on the main presentation which starts at 7 pm:
>
>"So Says I**": Financial cryptography, microintemediation and the power of
>reputation in a ubiquitous geodesic economy.

< Actually, "I" is "Joe Nebuchannezar" ;-), RAH>

>(That really means there's a whole lotta' shakin' goin' on in the area of
>electronic money!)
>
>
>** "I" is Bob Hettinga, the founder of the Digital Commerce Society of
>Boston, and resident man with opinions on most aspects of e$$
>
>
>Obviously, the net is going to give us the ability for anyone, anywhere, to
>buy anything.  No matter where the buyer or seller is, or, for that matter,
>where the thing being sold is.
>
>However, financial cryptography, the technology which underlies digital
>commerce, will have much more profound implications than merely the
>simplification of sales and distribution. It permits us to make anonymous
>*cash* transactions for everything from a billion-dollar foriegn exchange
>trade to possibly even switching internet packets themselves.
>
>If this promise is kept, it could change the fundamentals of our entire
>society. It forces profit and loss responsibility further and further down
>into organizations until they break up into smaller competing operating
>units. It makes book-entry transactions like checks or credit cards
>obsolete, and replaces them with strange stuff like digital cash and
>personal digital bearer bonds. It creates cash-settled auction markets for
>practically anything. People joke about routers and switches which save up
>enough from their traffic-tolls to buy copies of themselves. About
>micromoney as processor food.
>
>On a macroeconomic scale, all of government's revenue sources are
>book-entry taxes, like those on sales, income, and capital gains. "What
>happens when taxes become a tip?", some people have asked. That is, if
>government can't trace transactions anymore, because of the very way those
>transactions executed, how will government be funded?
>
>Disintermediation is a common buzzword in the financial markets. It is
>usually meant to describe what mutual fund companies have done to banks.
>What happens when mutual funds become microintermediated?
>
>In this talk, we'll look at all of this, and what the world might look like
>if Moore's Law and strong cryptography do manage to create a geodesic
>economy.
>
>>From 6:30-7pm, we had expected to have a demonstration of Black Diamond's
>web video software, but we haven't quite solved the technical details...(it
>is active X, and we can't get that on a UNIX machine yet ;)  )  I am still
>expecting that one of their representatives will be joining us.  We will
>also have the usual Q&A during that time.
>
>If you don't know where Building 6 Room 120 is, the simplest way to describe
>it follows:
>
>Go to the main entrance of MIT on Mass Ave and walk up the steps into the
>domed building.  Go straight ahead into the long hall ("the infinite
>corridor".)  Keep walking until you reach the sign that says Building 6,to
>the right.  Turn down the hall to the right until you reach room 120 on your
>right.
>
>
>Looking forward to seeing you all!
>
>Cheers,
>Marianne
>*********************************************************************
>
>       Marianne Cooley            Internet Special Interest Group
>       NetHorizons Unlimited      Coming Soon!  A *new* Boston Group
>       mcooley at nethorizons.com
>       617.433.0825
>
>Join "Life at Internet Speed" on www.boston.com Wednesdays from 1-2pm!
>For a chat topic reminder, send an email to chat-reminder at nethorizons.com
> with your full name and email address in the body of the message.
>**********************************************************************
>
>
>
>
*********************************************************************

       Marianne Cooley            Internet Special Interest Group
       NetHorizons Unlimited      Coming Soon!  A *new* Boston Group
       mcooley at nethorizons.com
       617.433.0825

Join "Life at Internet Speed" on www.boston.com Wednesdays from 1-2pm!
For a chat topic reminder, send an email to chat-reminder at nethorizons.com
 with your full name and email address in the body of the message.
**********************************************************************


--- end forwarded text



-----------------
Robert Hettinga (rah at shipwright.com)
e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"The cost of anything is the foregone alternative" -- Walter Johnson
The e$ Home Page: http://www.vmeng.com/rah/








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