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"So Says I", 10/24 ISIG Meeting
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Date: Thu, 24 Oct 1996 13:58:24 -0400 (EDT)
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To: Robert Hettinga <[email protected]>
From: [email protected] (Marianne Cooley)
Subject: "So Says I", 10/24 ISIG Meeting
fyi
>Date: Tue, 22 Oct 1996 15:45:27 -0400 (EDT)
>X-Sender: [email protected]
>To: [email protected]
>From: [email protected] (Marianne Cooley)
>Subject: "So Says I", 10/24 ISIG Meeting
>Sender: [email protected]
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>Reply-To: [email protected]
>
>Join us for a great evening at MIT, Building 6, Room 120 for the latest ISIG
>meeting. Here's the scoop on the main presentation which starts at 7 pm:
>
>"So Says I**": Financial cryptography, microintemediation and the power of
>reputation in a ubiquitous geodesic economy.
< Actually, "I" is "Joe Nebuchannezar" ;-), RAH>
>(That really means there's a whole lotta' shakin' goin' on in the area of
>electronic money!)
>
>
>** "I" is Bob Hettinga, the founder of the Digital Commerce Society of
>Boston, and resident man with opinions on most aspects of e$$
>
>
>Obviously, the net is going to give us the ability for anyone, anywhere, to
>buy anything. No matter where the buyer or seller is, or, for that matter,
>where the thing being sold is.
>
>However, financial cryptography, the technology which underlies digital
>commerce, will have much more profound implications than merely the
>simplification of sales and distribution. It permits us to make anonymous
>*cash* transactions for everything from a billion-dollar foriegn exchange
>trade to possibly even switching internet packets themselves.
>
>If this promise is kept, it could change the fundamentals of our entire
>society. It forces profit and loss responsibility further and further down
>into organizations until they break up into smaller competing operating
>units. It makes book-entry transactions like checks or credit cards
>obsolete, and replaces them with strange stuff like digital cash and
>personal digital bearer bonds. It creates cash-settled auction markets for
>practically anything. People joke about routers and switches which save up
>enough from their traffic-tolls to buy copies of themselves. About
>micromoney as processor food.
>
>On a macroeconomic scale, all of government's revenue sources are
>book-entry taxes, like those on sales, income, and capital gains. "What
>happens when taxes become a tip?", some people have asked. That is, if
>government can't trace transactions anymore, because of the very way those
>transactions executed, how will government be funded?
>
>Disintermediation is a common buzzword in the financial markets. It is
>usually meant to describe what mutual fund companies have done to banks.
>What happens when mutual funds become microintermediated?
>
>In this talk, we'll look at all of this, and what the world might look like
>if Moore's Law and strong cryptography do manage to create a geodesic
>economy.
>
>>From 6:30-7pm, we had expected to have a demonstration of Black Diamond's
>web video software, but we haven't quite solved the technical details...(it
>is active X, and we can't get that on a UNIX machine yet ;) ) I am still
>expecting that one of their representatives will be joining us. We will
>also have the usual Q&A during that time.
>
>If you don't know where Building 6 Room 120 is, the simplest way to describe
>it follows:
>
>Go to the main entrance of MIT on Mass Ave and walk up the steps into the
>domed building. Go straight ahead into the long hall ("the infinite
>corridor".) Keep walking until you reach the sign that says Building 6,to
>the right. Turn down the hall to the right until you reach room 120 on your
>right.
>
>
>Looking forward to seeing you all!
>
>Cheers,
>Marianne
>*********************************************************************
>
> Marianne Cooley Internet Special Interest Group
> NetHorizons Unlimited Coming Soon! A *new* Boston Group
> [email protected]
> 617.433.0825
>
>Join "Life at Internet Speed" on www.boston.com Wednesdays from 1-2pm!
>For a chat topic reminder, send an email to [email protected]
> with your full name and email address in the body of the message.
>**********************************************************************
>
>
>
>
*********************************************************************
Marianne Cooley Internet Special Interest Group
NetHorizons Unlimited Coming Soon! A *new* Boston Group
[email protected]
617.433.0825
Join "Life at Internet Speed" on www.boston.com Wednesdays from 1-2pm!
For a chat topic reminder, send an email to [email protected]
with your full name and email address in the body of the message.
**********************************************************************
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-----------------
Robert Hettinga ([email protected])
e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"The cost of anything is the foregone alternative" -- Walter Johnson
The e$ Home Page: http://www.vmeng.com/rah/