At 06:32 PM 4/28/01 -0700, Tim May wrote:
>People don't need to spend several months wading through cryptography
>textbooks to come up to a level that is sufficient to understand the
>real issues.)
>
>
>--Tim May
In fact, crypto textbooks will teach you about the tensile strength
of steel, but not that you can build bridges and cars and guns from it.
They'll teach you protocols, but not how much it costs to bribe a
counter-intelligence manager.
They'll teach you Chaum's math but not May's inevitabilities.
....
This list is uniquely useful (indeed, 'chartered' (snicker)) for the study
of the social impacts
of crypto. Note that studying something doesn't mean endorsing it. I end
with
two examples.
* we may lament the death of copyright but acknowledge certain socially
interesting technological trends (Moore's 'law',
bandwith-doubling-every-9-month, TCP/IP (snicker), N*pster, Gnut*lla)
leading to its demise are inevitable.
* we may lament the death of tyrants, but we acknowledge that shit happens.
Much
like conventional historians, eh?
We may regret that certain species are extinct but we are not making
the rules here.
