Recommendations for Cypherpunks Books

[Bill Stewart]

One of the major values to fiction is that it lets you think about
the social implications of technology, in most cases without
going deeply into the technology itself.  That's important for
cypherpunks, though the street finds its own uses for tech,
and it's easier to describe crypto non-bogusly than it is to
describe star-drive engines or brain-machine interfaces.

Neil Stephenson's Cryptonomicon is of course recommended,
and classics like Vinge's "True Names" and "A Fire Upon The Deep".
and Stephenson's "Snow Crash".  Orson Scott Card's "Ender's Game"
has some nice treatment of reputation systems and pseudonymity -
unfortunately it's *much* harder to get the tech correct than it is
to write about what if feels like to use well-designed systems :-)
Brunner's "Shockwave Rider" and Sterling's "Islands in the Net"
hit some of the appropriate space.
"Trouble and Her Friends" has some good treatment of cryptographically
protected subcultures, though that's more as redeeming-social-value
for a book that's written for genre.  
"Idoru" by Gibson does some of the same.

Then there's "ruthless.com" by "whatever hack writer Tom Clancy's 
franchised his name out to these days" - Bad Tech, 1-dimensional characters,
but it's interesting to see whose political agenda he's selling out to.
Bring your barf bags, but read it....

>> One effort in this direction which comes to mind is the "communitarian"
>> approach applied to privacy by Amitai Etizoni. What I've heard of it I
>> don't like, but I don't know much more than a few basic things -
>> "community" above all, corporate invasions of privacy pure evil, state
>> intrusions less evil because subject to scrutiny. 

Etizoni is a very technical boy.  Unfortunately, his value system
led him to invent "Fair Cryptography" (that's "fair" as in "Fair Trade",
not "fair" as in "actually fair to anybody" :-), which covers a 
couple of variants on key escrow.
				Thanks! 
					Bill
Bill Stewart, bill.stewart at pobox.com
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