True Names reviewed on /.

Tim May tcmay at got.net
Mon Jan 14 12:54:51 PST 2002


On Monday, January 14, 2002, at 11:08 AM, Trei, Peter wrote:

> http://slashdot.org/books/01/12/27/1845203.shtml
>
> 'michael' has reviewed "True Names and The
> Opening of the Cyberspace Frontier" over on
> slashdot. I won't discuss the review or the book
> in detail other than to say that the book should
> be considered Required Reading, and the review
> is also good.
>
> michael has this to say about our Resident
> Author:
>
> "Timothy May, who is perhaps best
> known for his ranting posts about crypto anarchy,
> has a lengthy and astonishingly well-written essay
> titled "True Nyms and Crypto Anarchy". The
> essay reads as if an editor with a firm hand
> extracted most of May's characteristic wild-eyed
> prose and yet kept the insightful ideas behind it - if
> only all of his writing was like this essay.

Typical of Slash Dot carelessness.

I wrote that essay several years ago and it is essentially unchanged 
from what I wrote then. The words are mine. None of them are the words 
of the editor except in terms of light copyediting.

Jim Frenkel, the editor, made a few changes, but they are hard to find. 
The changes involve deleting a few phrases he thought could be pared 
down. The writing, the organization, the phrasing, etc. is all mine. Dig 
up versions I posted several years ago if you don't believe me.

(Due to his sending me repeated messages to "tcmay at got.com" instead of 
to "got.net," he only reached me this last go-round just days before the 
final submission to the printer. I made a few typo and vocabulary 
changes in the day or two I had and submitted the changes.)

Sure, there's a difference between the writing style in my published 
articles (this one, the Imagina piece reprinted in Peter Ludlow's 
"Crypto Anarchy" collection, etc.) and in things I write for the 
Cypherpunks list. "Duh!"



> It's a
> great introduction to what May means by "crypto
> anarchy". May is one of the most optimistic writers
> in the book, and he, as well as the other writers,
> believe that we are at a fork: either we'll move
> toward a surveillance state, or toward what May
> calls an anarcho-capitalist state, but the middle
> ground is unstable - we'll end up at one extreme or
> the other. May believes we're already firmly on
> the road toward anarcho-crypto-utopia."

I appreciate the reviewer thinking it's a good introduction and 
overview. I spent a fair amount of time organizing the ideas and trying 
to at least touch on most of the important ideas and applications. And 
to tie it in to "True Names," especially the "colonization of 
cyberspace" (or cypherspace) aspect. Namely, the role crypto and robust 
protocols will play in "holding the walls up" (in Snow Crash 
Multiverses, Habitats, and True Names immersive VRs) and in building 
digital economies in cyberspace. Crypto is about a helluva lot more than 
just PGP and RSA...it's about building the I-beams and sheetrock that 
will allow robust structures to be built, it's about the railroad lines 
and power lines that will connect the structures, and it's about 
creating Galt's Gulch in cyberspace, where it belongs.

This is the "vision" that is what Cypherpunks is/was/should be really 
about. The low-tech jive about mere things like "e-mail privacy" was 
fairly banal ten years ago and is even more so today.

Our physical Cypherpunks gathering on Saturday was not so great. Several 
reasons. But it shows the need to get back to a different focus. For 
example...

The evening of the CP meeting was a huge and crowded party at Brad 
Templeton's house (Brad was the rec.humor.funny guy, then the founder of 
Clarinet, now some kind of honcho in EFF.) The Usual Suspect, including 
founders of companies and science fiction authors, lots of Apple and Sun 
employees, etc. Also the core bunch of E (the capability language, see 
www.erights.org) folks. And Eric Drexler, the nanotech guy.

I had a fascinating chat with Shawn O'Connor, who doesn't choose to post 
to the CP list (I forget why not). The chat helped to crystallize some 
ideas I have; maybe I'll write them up soon. (Related to three pictures 
of crypto and financial instrument ontologies). This quiet, but intense, 
chat was worth more than any several "business as usual" Cypherpunks 
meetings.

Thanks, Shawn! And consider posting here, please.

The connection with the above-reviewed article is that more of this kind 
of "way out" stuff is in the article, less in articles here. Which is 
natural, as each article ("rant") here cannot be a self-contained 
tutorial on things which were laid out nearly 10 years ago. (Not 
claiming the work was finished then, or now. Just claiming that we must 
assume a certain amount of foundational things. This is one reason I 
used to urge folks like Faustine to do some homework and learn what we 
knew a decade ago, surely 5-6 years ago. Perhaps if she reads the "True 
Names" collection she'll be better able to contribute.)

This is why books are still needed and why Slash Dot readers should 
think about learning to read them.

--Tim May
"If I'm going to reach out to the the Democrats then I need a third 
hand.There's no way I'm letting go of my wallet or my gun while they're 
around." --attribution uncertain, possibly Gunner, on Usenet





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