Refutations Considered Unnecessary

[Tim May]

At 1:49 PM -0500 1/10/01, John Young wrote:
>Well, yes, I owe the cypherpunks founders an apology,
>so apology sent.
>
>Our rump session after Steve's talk last night, to which
>he didn't come, put me face to face with 20 nyms and
>let me tell you online has its virtues -- the main one
>being never having to have people stare at your
>TLA forehead mark and you at theirs.
>
>Everybody in the room said they're working on a
>book, really, but what they needed was a writer to
>burnish the jewels. There was a writer there but
>incognito, knowing what happens in NYC at
>any gathering when pols, doctors, lawyers and thieves
>lock onto someone who has authentic literary skills.

Well, I went through my "working on a book" phase in 1988-91, when I 
was working feverishly for many hours a day on my Great Crypto 
Anarchic Novel. (At least many of the ideas for the novel turned out 
to be useful for the Next Phase, which was Cypherpunks.)

I, at least, never fell prey to the Usual Malarkey of thinking that 
all I needed to do was feed some ideas to a Real Writer who would 
then help me finish it, or collaborate.

Fact is, generating a book is hard work. In terms of lining up the 
publishers, editors, etc. The actual writing may not be too hard, 
based on some of the fluff I see out there. (Some of the 120-page 
pieces of fluff by Silicon Valley types, for example, which look like 
something easily generated by anyone with even modest writing skills. 
In fact, I'm sure most of these books by Valley CEOs are, naturally, 
ghost-written.)

>
>Even a total stranger at the bar up front had a story which
>he said makes the stuff in CRYPTO mere child's play.
>NSA-trained he claimed to be and a long time battler of
>corporate evildoing. Great piles of files to prove it, only
>a ghost writer needed.

See!

At least we don't hear this kind of tripe at Bay Area gatherings. 
People are too aware of how foolish this stuff sounds.


--Tim May
-- 
Timothy C. May         tcmay at got.net        Corralitos, California
Political: Co-founder Cypherpunks/crypto anarchy/Cyphernomicon
Technical: physics/soft errors/Smalltalk/Squeak/agents/games/Go
Personal: b.1951/UCSB/Intel '74-'86/retired/investor/motorcycles/guns