"Who shall speak for us?"

[tcmay@got.net (Timothy C. May)]

The questions "Who are the Cypherpunks?" and  "Who shall speak for us?"
have come up several times, in different contexts:

-- Reporters want "human interest" stories for their other stories on
Netscape cracks, SSL challenges, arrests, executions, etc. They want to
know who we are, what our agenda is, what motivates us, and who our
spokesmen are.

-- "Who shall be our Spokesman?" keeps coming up. "Who shall speak for us?"

-- There is once again talk about "getting organized" so as to better
compete with EPIC, EFF, CPSR, VTW, ACLU, etc. While no one is seriously
advocating a formal, dues-collecting organization, their is an undercurrent
of thought that we had better get more organized or we'll just be roadkill
on the information superduperhighway.

-- And there seems to be a sense of uneasiness amongst some of us that
there can't be a "Cypherpunks group" without organization, without
hierarchy.

In contrast, there have been points made that we are "nothing," not even a
group, and that we are only a set of mailing list subscribers. I think this
is too extreme a view, as we clearly have:

* some sense of membership in a group, some sense of cohesion, some sense
of "Us" vs. "Them."

* regional activities in several parts of the U.S. and in some non-U.S.
countries.

* a growing archive of postings, of knowledge gained through hard work.


So, we are _more_ than just the subscribers to a mailing list, but _less_
than a formal organization with shareholders, voters, elected officials,
and a Great Leader at the top.

What are we, then?

One parallel is to a bunch of folks who meet at a gathering spot, perhaps a
bar or pub. Perhaps a reading group, a book club.  People who talk,
speculate, exchange theories, and even decide on things that some of them
will do. Maybe these folks, an ever-changing set of folks, will come to
some commonly-held viewpoints, though not held by all folks, and not "voted
on" to be the Official Position of this informal gathering of folks at the
local bar.

Cyberspace allows for all sorts of new kinds of "watering holes" where such
emergent, loosely-organized, anarchic groups may develop. These "virtual
communities" are an incredibly important development. (My paper given at
Imagina '95, in Monte Carlo, "Crypto Anarchy and Virtual Communities," goes
into this in detail.)

Another parallel is to what is sometimes called an "invisible college."
Academic researchers in a country or around the world form a loose kind of
invisible college, a network of people at various institutions that share a
common interest and that have certain emergent standards. Think of the
cryptology researchers, or the fusion researchers, of the world. In this
invisible college, reputations matter. Some researchers are more esteemed
than others, some play different roles than others. Some of them are mostly
teachers, others are buried deeply in their laboratories.

And, as with the informal pub gathering, this invisible college does not
have to "vote" on an official position, or "elect" leaders.

Ah, I hear some of you pointing out, "But in fact some of these invisible
colleges _do_ elect officials and _do_ have official positions!" Indeed,
many invisible colleges develop subsets that have formal structures and
become the de facto _professional guilds_ for their organizations. The
American Association of Chiropractic Examiners, the French League of Graph
Paper Experts, the Russian Federation of Agriculturists, and on and on.
(More seriously, the American Bar Association, the American Medical
Associatio, etc.)

Often these "professional organizations" are designed to extend the reach
of these organizations, to give official titles to the early organizers,
and to lobby governments for laws favorable to their members. Often these
formal organizations adopt licensing rules and regulations to "police
themselves" and also, in well-known cases of "public choice" theory and
"rent-seeking behavior," to limit the number of competitors. Often the
other hierarchies, such as the State itself, endorse the rules adopted by
the professional guilds.

(I'm not saying anyone is directly arguing that the Cypherpunks, not even
by innuendo, become a professional guild, but some of the clamoring about
how we need to adopt a less threatening or strange name, organize ourselves
more hierchically, and present a more unified front is often a step toward
a rigid bureaucracy.)

It's been gratifying to me, at least, that the Cypherpunks group has not
fallen prey to this temptation, that in an important sense "we practice
what we preach." We claim to be an "anarchy," not a "hierarchy."

While it may be the case that each of us has his or her own personal
heirarchical ratings of others, it is important that we never have tried to
formalize or "vote on" these ratings. Or voted to elect a Great Leader.

Our strength is in our numbers and in our ideas, not in the guy we have
ensconced in an office in Washington so he can give press conferences and
sound bites for journalists. Our strength is in our multi-headed (dare I
mention "Medusa"?), multinational, informal lack of structure.

"But how will _We_ compete with the organizations that have Washington
offices? How will we get "air time" if we have no Spokespunk in Washington,
or no list of Official Spokespunks that journalists can call to get The
Cypherpunks Slant on things? Who shall speak for us?"

The answer is simple: Let no one claim to speak for "us." Let no one claim
to be a speaker for others. Let journalists adjust to a new way of
speaking, a nonhierarchical way of saying "I think" and "My view is." Let
journalists contact the people actually doing something they are writing
about. Let journalists call the people directly involved, not the Official
Spokespunks. It may be _easier_ for some journalists to simply call the guy
they always call, just to get a "reaction quote," but our job is not to
make it easier for some lazy journalists.

And let those who dislike the name "Cypherpunks" call themselves something
else. Nothing's stopping them. Of course, it may be that the people wanting
a more conservative, more staid name also wish to "inherit" the mantle the
Cypherpunks now have, wish to convey to the "International Association of
Cybernetic Privacy Advocates," or whatever, the membership and reputation
of the current and past Cypherpunks. This, I think, is the "old way" of
doing things, the herd way.

If the views many of us have about anarchy and cyberspace are correct, this
way of operating represents the future. If not, who cares what we think?

--Tim May





---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
tcmay@got.net  408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
Corralitos, CA              | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
Higher Power: 2^756839      | black markets, collapse of governments.
"National borders are just speed bumps on the information superhighway."