Recommendations for Cypherpunks Books

dmolnar dmolnar at hcs.harvard.edu
Sat Jan 20 13:37:15 PST 2001




On Sat, 20 Jan 2001, Foobulus Baracculus wrote:

> What I would enjoy reading:
> - books on cryptoterrorism and cryptoliberation, where a major part of the 
> plot revolves around the use of cryptography technologies in terrorism or 
> liberation.

Why? No, really - do we really need a book in which the majority of the
time is devoted to a minute analysis of how the Evil Terrorist screws up
his web of trust? Can you imagine the prose that would result?

-- 

"Sign it," Shirley said. 

As he popped the diskette into the drive of his laptop, he began to
reflect on the magnitude of the responsibility he had just undertaken. 
How could he know that Shirley was not actually working for one of Them? 
As the key display came up on his screen, he scanned the list of
signatures. Alfonse, Mohammed, Mummar - he quickly checked his mental map
of the Organization's web of trust. His signature was all she needed
before the Great Leader would accept her key as valid!

His blood turned to ice in his veins. He had made a terrible, terrible
mistake. 

"What's wrong?" Shirley breathed down his neck, "get on with it!" 

"OK," he finally said. And hit return. 

The disk drive whirred. A few seconds, and it was done. He popped out the
diskette, handed it to Shirley, and began to think of good ways to die. 

--

Maybe this is all right for a few pages or so, but an entire book? even an
entire story? It's hard for me to see how to pull it off without the story
being eaten alive by the details. 

Look, don't get me wrong, for a long time I wanted "stories about
CRYPTOgraphy, man!" too. Even tried writing one or two, but they never
made it anywhere. Why? Because if the story is about the cryptography
instead of about a story...it's not likely to be much of a story.

(Remind me to tell you about this idea for a guy beta-testing the first
spex-ware who becomes involved in a plot to re-elect President Flockhart
by forcing a hung election and then predicting the resulting coin-toss in
mid-air using a supremely powerful computer sometime...)

The danger that constantly threatens with this kind of thing seems to be
that any story is pushed aside in favor of a discussion of "101 Amazing
Things You Can Do With Cryptography." Then why read that instead of
Applied Cryptography?

The other extreme, of course, is the hollywood route. No real
understanding of cryptography, beyond "black boxes that break codes."
Hopefully I don't have to explain why this is unsatisfactory. 

I don't know of anything explicitly focused on cryptography which manages
to strike the right balance. "True Names" is what we always talk about as
The Cypherpunk Novella - but if you look at it, there's remarkably little
cryptography or discussion of technology. Much more about pseudonyms and
the ability to project control across computer networks. _Cryptonomicon_
separates the story and the expository parts; a strategy which prevents
disaster, but has its own cost.

> - books on cryptocommunities, where a major part of the plot revolves around 
> people that are "cryptoheads" and for which cryptography and technology is a 
> major part of their lifestyle (people who somewhat live, breathe and eat 
> cryptography).

Stephenson's "Drummers" in _The Diamond Age_ and the CryptNet loosely
associated with them seem to almost fit this bill. Except that we never do
find out much about how they work, as far as I recall. 

Again, I'd be a bit wary of a story written by someone who set out to
"write about crypto-heads." The truth is likely to be a bit stranger than
fiction. At least until the two are a bit closer than they are now.

On the other hand, there are gems like St. Jude's story about the
cypherpunks from 1992 (recently reposted here) which sparkle with wit,
brilliance, and razor language. All my doubts carried away. 

At least until I realize that the story was written in 1992, and here we
are nine years later...

-David






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