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

[Tim May]

Some lurker unwilling to comment on the public list sent me this. I 
didn't notice it wasn't intended for the list until I had already 
written a reply and was preparing to send it. So I have altered the 
name.

--Tim

On Friday, July 25, 2003, at 01:07 PM, SOMEONE wrote:

> Tim May wrote:
>
>> 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.
>
> Readers on the cypherpunks list? They should be able to understand it, 
> or at
> least they should have heard of it.

They may have _heard_ of it, but to most of them (I t hink) it's just 
some magical incantations which they don't quite believe anyway.

>
>> 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.
>
>
> That's a shame. The 1985 paper isn't on-line afaik, and I've only read
> second-hand versions.

First, my "stopped any efforts...a long time ago" was a comment 
directed at what the OP was talking about: explaining digital money to 
the masses. For example, at parties or other meatspace gatherings. 
Online explanations--here, for example--are another matter.

Second, the many online explanations from the CP list, circa 1992-94, 
are readily findable. Let me go check....(20 seconds pass...)...yep, I 
just found hundreds of summary articles from various authors, including 
myself, Eric Hughes, Hal Finney, Doug Barnes, Ian Goldberg, and many 
others. There is no shortage of explanations of this stuff.

In one of my articles, in fact, I make the same point about how the 
various boring versions of "electronic money" are not very important:

"The focus here is on true, untraceable digital cash, offering both 
payer and payee untraceability (anonymity). Mundane digital money, 
exemplified by on-line banking, ATM cards, smartcards, etc., is not 
interesting or important for CFP purposes. Payer-untraceable (but 
payee-traceable) digital cash can also be interesting, but not nearly 
as interesting and important as fully untraceable digital cash. "

There are many articles on why this is so. But, frankly, anyone who 
cannot see this from first principles probably is not ever going to get 
it.

Third, regarding the CACM article, it's been "liberated" and made 
available online more than a few times. Try search engines. I know the 
Information Liberation Front (ILF) was actively liberating various of 
the key papers in the early months of the CP list...and these are 
mostly archived and searchable.

And of course Chaum's original 1985 description has been redone many 
times, in later papers by him and others, etc.


>
> And I don't think it works at all, anyway...
>

As it's been demonstrated to work, technically, this is a weird 
statement. Existence proofs are powerful.

If you mean that Bank of America and Mastercard are not offering 
Chaum-style instruments, and so on, then this is not the same thing as 
saying the ideas don't work.

--Tim May