Recommendations for Cypherpunks Books

[Tim May]

I want to expand on a point I made here:

At 9:42 AM -0800 1/21/01, Tim May wrote:
>At 11:02 AM -0500 1/21/01, dmolnar wrote:
>>
>>
>>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.


And of course this "thesis-anthesis-synthesis" viewpoint, or, more 
simply, the "battle" viewpoint, is precisely why "Wired" put 
Cypherpunks on the cover of their second issue. And why "the little 
offshore rig pirates who could" are featured in a more recent issue.

Conflict sells magazines. So small groups of people are characterized 
as the vanguard of a new revolutionary movement ("Crypto Rebels"), as 
the forward scouts, as revolutionaries. "Forbes" even put Sameer 
Parekh on the cover of their mag, full face, with some tag line about 
how "This man wants to overthrow the U.S. government." That's 
attention I'm happy _not_ to have gotten, frankly.

Dave Mandl, who used to be on the list in the beginning, called this 
the "freak of the week" effect. And people in movements use this 
media attention to get their message out. Both sides use each other. 
We all have heard the tales. (It's just useful to remind folks here 
on this list that the same thing happens with our kinds of interests.)

All of this has been seen many times before, in contexts ranging from 
protests about the Vietnam War to abortion rights marches and on and 
on. Phony conflicts are set up and a few ringleaders get a lot of 
ink. The more outrageous their comments, the more face time they get.

And such a story can segue nicely into a follow-up piece a few years 
later, about the "Twilight of the Crypto Geeks" or about how Vietnam 
War protestors are now making big bugs on Wall Street. Thesis, 
Antithesis, Synthesis.

The moral (all drama has a moral...)? Believe neither the initial 
hype nor the inevitable analysis of what went wrong, why the 
revolution never happened, now disillusionment set in, and so on.

Drama 101 as taught by Herr Doktor Professor Hegel, with dissenting 
comments from hs former sidekick, Fred N.

--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