The Futility of General Crypto Education?

[tcmay@netcom.com (Timothy C. May)]

Pete Carpenter (welcome, Pete!) writes:

....stuff about a radio call-in show elided....
>But no, the guy went off into a 'statement' about how the goverment 
>wants to interfere with 'digital money', and the moderator cut him off, 
>dry. No disscussion - substitute some other question about jobs.
>
>The moral of the story is - KISS! keep it simple, when talking about
>these issues to the general public. Privacy in the electronic age is 
>something that everyone can understand. And quite a few 'regular' people 
>are very much concerned. Offer wide spread public encryption technology 
>as a solution to the problem.  
>
>But PLEASE, don't gum up (public) disscussion with esoterica like 
>'digital money'.  Most people don't even understand how 'regular' 
>money works :-)

Point well taken. Most of the stuff we talk about is almost too esoteric
for _ourselves_ (well, at times), let alone for the public. 

Pete's point is that we should keep our message very simple, mostly by
focussing on privacy. (This is a theme Tom Jennings has also pushed, even
urging this list to drop references to "crypto," which he thinks connotes
spies and secrets, and instead replace it with "privacy," which he thinks
most people will find more palatable.)

But I think trying to educate the public is an absolutely lost cause. The
Libertarian Party has been trying for years, and just got the lowest vote
percentage in their history. (I suspect the Peace and Freedom Party, or
other parties, would admit the same thing.)

The average voter believes in UFOs, ghosts, brain cancer from cellular
phones, the dangers of nuclear power, psychics, the War on (Some) Drugs,
and the whole "democracy" thing. She certainly won't take the time to learn
about RSA, digital money, etc.

We won't get crypto liberty via the ballot box, we'll get it only if the
technology is sound and is deployed widely enough so that attempts to stop
it are futile. This has been how the most important changes in society have
occurred, from agriculture to printing to telephones: the technology filled
some need, spread, and became unstoppable. Convincing the voters at the
ballot box was never an issue.

Having said this, I agree that there's some role for educating some
fraction of the public, so I applaud the many fine efforts of the EFF,
CPSR, and so on. And some of these efforts may delay legislation which
would make otherwise delay the "Crypto Phase Change."

And I suppose I agree with Pete that if and when public forums are held,
common sense dictates that the really abstruse stuff be avoided--I know I'd
flip to another station if the discussion turned to the intricacies of PERL
scripts in remailers! :-}


-Tim May


--
Timothy C. May               | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,  
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