A 'Funky A.T.M.' Lets You Pay for Purchases Made Online

[Tyler Durden]

"So it's best to ignore the "unwashed masses" and their inability to 
understand untraceable money."

That's precisely the wrong conclusion, assuming everything else you wrote in 
this post is correct.

If one accepts that most young people don't understand the notion or 
implications of truely digital "cash", then one's tactics must change 
considerably.

If de-empowering some aspects of the State is your goal, a new constrant is 
that your methods must not rely on anyone giving a crap about your goals, or 
possibly of digital cash. This does not mean that these ideas are destined 
to flounder, but instead it may mean that for them to have life they must 
find it somewhere where people can understand their usefulness. For 
instance, I can easily see some notions of untraceable digital cash finding 
applications over certain kinds of P2P networks. But if you continue to 
discuss the issue in the abstract, or purely in the context of de-stating 
the state, the youngins won't pay attention long enough for them to 
recognize why this may be useful to them. Eventually, however, they'll find 
the need for these ideas and do their homework.

-TD






>From: Tim May <timcmay at got.net>
>To: cypherpunks at lne.com
>Subject: Re: A 'Funky A.T.M.' Lets You Pay for Purchases Made Online
>Date: Fri, 25 Jul 2003 00:46:09 -0700
>
>On Thursday, July 24, 2003, at 07:12 PM, Steve Furlong wrote:
>
>>On Thursday 24 July 2003 15:50, Tim May wrote:
>>
>>>In fact, "digicash" strongly suggests David Chaum's "Digicash,"
>>
>>That assumes the reader or listener has heard of Digicash, or of Chaum.
>>Not an assumption I'd be comfortable making.
>
>Agreed, making the assumption that readers here have heard of Chaum or 
>understand the basic idea of blinded transactions (or dining 
>cryptographers, or oblivious transfer, or any of the other building blocks) 
>is no longer warranted. I expect many of the persyns of peircing now 
>spewing on the list are, like, thinking "that's, like, _so_ nineties."
>
>As for thinking very general readers or listeners, those not even on the 
>list, are capable of understanding Chaum or Digicash, that's a fool's 
>errand. The average nontechnical person knows nothing about how crypto 
>works, and attempting to explain a DC-Net or a blinded transfer is no more 
>useful to them than just telling them the currency is based on "magic 
>beans."
>
>The point is not that laymen need to understand Digicash, but that calling 
>things like ATM cards and Visa cards "digicash" does a disservice to the 
>important ideas of why Chaum's and Brands' and similar systems worked.
>
>Hey, maybe it's actually the case that some of the people here who are 
>referring to electronic debit cards as "digicash" just don't have a clue 
>about what blinding is and why it makes for truly untraceable tokens.
>
>
>>I tend to use "electronic money" when discussing coin- or account-based
>>systems, anonymous or not, with the unwashed masses. It conveys the
>>meaning well enough to serve as an opening wedge to a better
>>description, and it's general enough that it shouldn't offend the
>>sensibilities of those few people who do understand the subject in
>>depth. And it hasn't been gobbled up by any company, so far as I know.
>
>I stopped any efforts to explain the true importance of electronic/digital 
>money/cash a long time ago. A waste of time. Not too surprising, as getting 
>even the basic idea requires some passing familiarity with things like how 
>RSA works. When I read Chaum's 1985 CACM paper I already knew about RSA and 
>"hard" directions for problems (trapdoor functions), and yet I still had to 
>read and reread the paper and draw little pictures for myself.
>
>Thinking someone can absorb the gist via a purely verbal description is 
>just not plausible. I have seen David Chaum attempt to do this with an 
>audience of computer professionals....my impression from the later 
>questions from the audience is that his explanation simply didn't get them 
>over the "hump" to the stage of realizing the key concept. No more so than 
>popularizations of relativity actually ever got the masses to understand 
>relativity.
>
>There is much that could be said about whether this difficulty is why we 
>don't have untraceable, Chaum-style forms of money (I don't think this is 
>the reason). Regardless, wishing won't make it so, and so wishing that 
>people would "grok" the importance of blinding without having spent at 
>least a few hours brushing up on RSA and exponentiation and all that and 
>then following an explanation very, very closely....well, wishing won't 
>make it so.
>
>So it's best to ignore the "unwashed masses" and their inability to 
>understand untraceable money.
>
>More troubling is that so many _here_ don't seem to "get it."
>
>--Tim May

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