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"high noon on the electronic frontier"




a neat new book that's a collection of some of the more
interesting essays on cyberspace called "high noon
on the electronic frontier" is now in bookstores, and
I highly recommend it. the editor Peter Ludlow has
a good eye and aesthetic sense for exactly the more
influential essays that have been written and
are circulating. the list of authors/contributors
is a real Who's Who in cyberspace:

Barlow, Stallman, Kapor, Godwin, Denning, Zimmermann, Chaum, Rheingold, 
Sterling, etc.

good articles by Dibbell, Levy, DeWitt, etc.

but unfortunately Markoff is conspicuously absent. maybe he
wanted too much money for his writing <g>

TCMay is well represented with several essays in a section on
"encryption, privacy, and crypto-anarchism". 3 essays,
Crypto Anarchist Manifesto, Intro to Blacknet, and
BlackNet worries.

I was curious about TCMay's essay on Blacknet, though, that
mentions a mysterious "X" who he credits as raising many
of the issues surrounding Blacknet on the cpunk mailing list
in Feb 1994. Ludlow states in a footnote TCMay "elided
references to interlocutors". I wonder about the identity
of the mysterious "X" and whether he/she is still posting
to the list. does anyone know who he/she is? 

I was thinking it would be interesting to see whether 
he/she still feels the same about Blacknet and/or get a new 
conversation going about the subject with the insight that 
time can bring.

I wonder why TCMay found it important to elide "X"'s identity-- 
perhaps "X" was one of his tentacles? (hee, hee) 

anyway I highly recommend this volume!! after reading this
the public will get a far better idea about what cyberspace
is about and what it means. a great coverage of all the
key issues.