Re: Things we should be working on...

[Robert Hettinga <rah@shipwright.com>]

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At 11:58 am -0400 on 9/2/97, Tim May wrote:


> At 5:43 AM -0700 9/2/97, Robert Hettinga wrote:
> >So, Tim, what should we all be working on, in particular?
>
> OK, you asked. This isn't a comprehensive list.

[outstanding non-comprehensive list snipped]

So, Tim, does this mean that you're now willing to fund development of any
of those things?




Sorry to bait and switch you like that, Tim, but I had a point.

That is, if it doesn't make money, it won't happen. Economic
"utilitarianism", like the rest of reality, is not optional.

> Also, 95% of the crap about "digital commerce" is merely a distraction. The
> wrong direction, the wrong technology. Just "Visa on the Net," and hence of
> no real use for our sorts of goals. Worse, the wrong direction.

Agreed. Book-entry transactions on the internet are the functional
equivalent of an electric car with a power cord. Or trying to make a
supersonic derigible. And, the *only* way you can have bearer certificate
transactions on the net of any non-repudiable strength is with
cryptography. The strongest cryptographic protocols, for very little extra
cost, are those involving anonymous bearer certificates, and so, I claim,
anonymous bearer certificate protocols will eventually replace "Visa on the
Net", with digital bearer forms of picocash, or macrobonds, or anonymously
held equity or derivatives. You certainly can't do those anywhere, much
less on the net, with book-entry settlement. The net, or the machines which
use them, anyway, would choke on the overhead.

The internet sees audit trails as damage and routes around them, to torture
poor Gilmore's quote one more time...


So, my goal is *not* to maximize privacy, because it's a natural
consequence of my actual goal, which is reduce the cost of any given
transaction by 3 or so orders of magnitude. To maximize profit, in other
words. The way to do that, on a ubiquitous internet, is, paradoxically,
with strong cryptography. That, I am sure, is a fundemental economic fact
of the universe.

Amazing, isn't it, that my goal and your goal get the same result of
ubiquitous financial (and thus any other kind of) anonymity? Kind of like
the neat way that some mathematics describes physical processes, or that
aerodynamic flight, ostensibly orthogonal to economics, is cheaper than
long distance surface travel, much less boyant flight, for moving people
around. An argument that Hume would have loved, certainly. The connection
between privacy and economic return is only constant conjunction, like the
sun coming up tomorrow because it came up every morning in human memory.
It's going to be just as predictable, though.


So, getting back to my point, which Sameer and PGP and even RSA have proven
already, and which lots of the rest of us hope to prove going forward,
cryptoanarchy must pay for itself in order to be deployed. It's that
simple.

In other words, if you want to see it, Tim, and you can't build it
yourself, hire it built, and see if it sells. It's risky, any investment
is, but given your past financial success, you're demonstrably clueful
enough to get a good return for any investment you make in cryptography.


Cheers,
Bob Hettinga

- -----------------
Robert Hettinga (rah@shipwright.com), Philodox
e$, 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
The e$ Home Page: http://www.shipwright.com/


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