Recommendations for Cypherpunks Books

[Tim May]

At 11:02 AM -0500 1/21/01, dmolnar wrote:
>On Sat, 20 Jan 2001, Jim Choate wrote:
>
>>  > (1) - books on future worlds and spaces: in particular, those that explore
>>  > social, moral, political, technical, ethical issues (to be 
>>science fiction),
>>  > or those that merely explore worlds (to be fantasy)
>>
>>  I see the utility in fiction to tell us what is most likely not to happen.
>
>"If I name a future, then it won't happen" - ?
>
>This reminds me of the view that SF writers are trying to "predict the
>future." I don't think picturing "the future" and then being "wrong" or
>"right" about that is what fiction is usually about. More often about
>commenting on the present.

I used to read a _lot_ of science fiction. (Many reasons why I read 
much less now.)

What SF did for me was to "immerse me" in various 
possible-but-not-necessarily-probable alternative futures, a kind of 
way of allowing a person to think that computers might one day be 
ubiquitous, that national borders might be undermined by technology, 
that alternative social organizations might arise.

Heinlein and his editor, John Campbell, used to refer to this as "if 
those goes on..."

Take some trend and extrapolate it. "If this goes on..."

Highways, for example, in Heinlein's "The Roads Must Roll."

Vinge's "True Names," extrapolating trends already becoming apparent 
to some in the 1970s.

And so on.

The most important thing reading SF does for people, IMO, is to 
disabuse them of the notion that there is "a" future. "What will 
_the_ future look like?" seems silly when a sheaf of possible futures 
is "what really is." Those who read a lot of good SF are more likely 
to understand this point, that futures are made, not pre-ordained, 
and that futures may hinge on very subtle points. (Reading a lot of 
"what if" novels helps. A recent one I enjoyed a great deal is 
"Resurrection Day," where the Cuban Missile Crisis escalated on a 
single hinge point--attacking Cuban bases after the U-2 was shot down 
on Saturday--and a nuclear war followed. There's also a movie out in 
theaters now, "Thirteen Days," about these events.)

One reason I read very little SF these days is that much of it is 
repetitive, or is set so far in the future as to be non-interesting 
to me, etc. Plus, the usual effects of aging. SF novels are less 
interesting at age 30 than at age 15, even less so by age 40, etc.

Sometimes some gems still appear. Of course, each person has their 
own taste. For my taste, the best SF I have read in many years is by 
an obscure writer named David Zindell. "Neverness," "The Broken God," 
"The Wild," and "The War in Heaven." Each is a thick, dense novel. 
All set in the same distant future universe, much like "Dune," but 
better (IMO).

Unfortunately, all are out of print. I buy up copies of the 
paperbacks when they show up in my local used bookstore. (Amazon 
wants $18 plus some handling fee for used copies!)

Look for "Neverness" and/or "The Broken God." The latter builds on 
the developments of the former, but can be read on its own. The other 
two novels really need to have the foundations laid by the earlier 
novels.


>
>
>I am reminded of the Salon article "Twilight of the crypto-geeks."
>http://www.salonmag.com/tech/feature/2000/04/13/libertarians/index1.html

Well, what do you expect from Salon? They might as well have Paulina 
Borsook writing about the decline of capitalism and the selfishness 
of corporations. Or have David Brin expound on the need for cameras 
everywhere.

Declan can comment on this, too, but it's clear that editors like 
"Hegelian" set-ups of conflict (thesis, antithesis, synthesis). So 
phrases like "Twilight of the ...." resonate in various ways, both 
Hegelian and Wagnerian. The phrases suggest "end of an era" when in 
fact there is no such end.

So Zimmerman is not a libertarian? We knew this in 1991. So Bruce 
Schneier thinks crypto is overrated? It is, in many ways. And so on.

"Twilight of the crypto-geeks" indeed.

>
>  > > - 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).
>>
>>  Ugh. The thought of a community that is so paranoid it exist through
>>  ubiquitous crypto is a bit self-contradictory I think. Who would you trust
>>  to make the technology?
>
>Who said anything about the community being paranoid? You can use
>cryptography to do new things beyond hiding data, you know. Probably the
>most pressing would be authentication and controlling the data presented
>to the world about you. Digital signatures and credentials.

BTW, "True Names" was just such a book. The participants were unknown 
to each other. (Vinge chose not to discuss the crypto in detail, 
wisely.)

>
>Now you can go further and ask "what if a society had digital auction
>protools?" or "what if selling your CPU cycles was normal and easy?"
>or "what if everyone knew about time-lock puzzles and time-release crypto
>and could use it in everyday life?" or "what if the elections went
>according to protocol X?"
>
>Even further, what if a society had the will and the capability to use all
>of these crypto protocols just as soon as they were developed? (For
>instance, posit that the provable security problem and the protocol
>assembly problem are solved. You think of something you want to do, you
>can put it together yourself and have it work.)

These were some of the things I was putting into my Great American 
Unfinished Novel, between 1988 and 1991, when I finally abandoned it. 
(No, lest anyone ask, I _won't_ send copies or excerpts out. So don't 
even ask. :-) )

>
>  > How would anyone have the time to make the horde
>>  of technologies this sort of society requires?
>
>PGP is here now, though of course no one uses it. PKI seems to be driven
>by something, e-commerce maybe. Academics and corporate research are
>looking for new and fun things to do with math. Sometimes they hire
>students to implement those fun things. Sometimes other people read the
>papers and implement the fun things themselves.
>
>Where did anonymous remailers come from?
>

Indeed.


--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