On Thu, Apr 11, 2002 at 02:37:50PM +0100, Adam Back wrote:
| - deployment / chicken and egg problem (merchants want lots of users
| before they're interested users want wide merchant acceptance before
| their interested)
I think its worse than that. The normal technology adoption curve is
that you have people ("visionaries" or "early adopters" who are
willing to use expensive technology with a high learning curve to get
something that they want. When they get a sufficient critical mass,
you move to the early mass market. However, with ecash you have the
problem that you need to convince not only the users who care about
their privacy, but also the merchants to accept it, and the banks to
issue it.
Consider for a moment if the telcos had to agree to support fax
machines; or perhaps if they had to agree to support DSL. (oh wait,
they do.)
Thus, ecash deployment is a 3 party problem, where most new
technologies that succeed are not. I'm honestly not sure if the
patents make a big difference in our ability to deploy, given that
they're a small speed bump on the way to this brick wall.
Sure, its easy, and even fun, to rail on about them, because maybe if
we rail at the patent owners long enough, they can be changed, whereas
the economic realities are not so subject to persuasion.
Adam
--
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once."
-Hume
