The Nature of the Cypherpunks Community and List

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

At 6:11 AM 7/10/96, Black Unicorn wrote:

>I wasn't touting conspiracy theories, just making what I thought was an
>amusing observation.
>
>My apologies to Mr. Duvos.  I didn't at all mean to suggest he was in any
>way responsible for this silliness, rather to point out the degree to
>which the conversation has sunk into the sewer.

Please, Unicorn, people here are talking about what interests them, as
directly demonstrated by the generation of articles and followups. If they
were _more_ interested in discussing the IETF, or SFS, or Triple DES, for
example, they _would_. (And at times they do, of course. All things have
their times, and threads ebb and flow.)

And, Unicorn, I recall you yourself generating several *dozen* long rants
regarding Jim Bell, just a few months ago...

I suggest to all people who claim that the list has become "sewerpunks"
that the best way to change the focus of the list is to write essays which
generate responses (as you did, Unicorn, several days ago in your excellent
"What remains to be done" piece). Leading by example, as opposed to
"leading by kvetching."

It happens that I like to write essays, more so than to just add simple
one-line comments, and it happens that some of my essays have triggered a
lot of messages (recently, for example, the "Net and Terrorism," and "Mind
Control Drugs" threads were started by my articles). If people, on the
whole, would rather discuss _other_ topics, then....then they _would_. A
simple concept.

Railing against the interests people have is rarely effective. And
claiming, as some do, that the "purpose" of the list is to discuss
primarily the latest advances in cryptology is mis-stating the nature of
the list. While there is no point in debating formal charters, people
discuss what they think is important. Natural corrective forces tend to
stop the discussion from getting too far afield. I cannot imagine someone
writing about UFOs getting much response, but that so many people have
thoughts on the "Ritalin" issue (and the role of the government schools in
supporting the doping of students) indicates it is within the envelope of
topics Cypherpunks think important.

Perry has several times threatened to form his own list, where "real
cryptography" will be the only topic allowed. I urge him to follow his
bliss. And other lists have had other foci, including the "Coderpunks"
list, which *is* explicitly about cryptography only. (Is the Coderpunks
list still active? I haven't heard anyone here mention it in a long time.)
And sci.crypt, sci.crypt.research, and dozens of security- and PGP-related
newsgroups are still flourishing.

The Cypherpunks folks started meeting in the summer of 1992, and our focus
was and remains on a wide spectrum of topics related to crypto-privacy,
politics of cryptography, PGP, anonymous remailers, and a bunch of related
themes. It *never* was a list devoted solely to pure cryptography; plenty
of academic and professional forums already serve that market--IACR/Journal
of Cryptology, Crypto, Eurocrypt, Asiacrypt, sci.crypt.*, various other
mailing lists, etc.

Our focus was always on the more "outre" aspects, the frontiers not often
dealt with in the academic journals. (Not that we are better
mathematicians, though many on this list are world-class, but because our
political focus informs our choice of topics to pursue. That is, we were
the first group to look seriously at anonymous remailers (in terms of
implementing Chaum's ideas), the first to really fool around with digital
cash in a real world environment outside the lab (MagicMoney), and we have
explored black information markets, offshore data havens, and so on. I
don't think any of the "academic" groups, distinguished as they are, have
made the kinds of demonstrations we have in some areas.

(Perry will probably disagree, calling us all a bunch of pikers and
deadbeats, as he has in the past, and claiming that the only "good"
Cypherpunks were Matt Blaze and Steve Bellovin, both of whom he claims were
"driven off the list" by people like me. Well, people join and leave lists
for all sorts of reasons. Regardless, our list is what it is. If Perry
thinks we're such worthless leeches and incompetents, he should create a
mailing list more to his liking. Seems fair to me.)

It is hardly surprising, nor inappropriate, that we "stray" from core
topics. After all, some topics are "worn out" at any given time. I don't
think the 8th cycle of discussions about cracking DES or the 13th cycle of
debates about NSA surveillance is any more useful than the discussions some
object to (but, interestingly, some of the most vocal critics of threads
being "off-topic" end up writing the greatest number of posts on that topic
:-}).

In any case, people can learn to use killfiles to filter out entire
threads, or the posts of people they dislike reading.

--Tim May

Boycott "Big Brother Inside" software!
We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, we know that that ain't allowed.
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
tcmay@got.net  408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA  | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
Licensed Ontologist         | black markets, collapse of governments.
"National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."