From: Eric Hughes <hughes@soda.berkeley.edu>
Date: Wed, 3 Mar 93 16:22:08 PST
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: SOCIETY: crypto impact
In-Reply-To: <199303032336.AA26450@Menudo.UH.EDU>
Message-ID: <9303040018.AA28660@soda.berkeley.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
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>Like any new technology, selling crypto to the public will be
>difficult at first.  I'll bet the telephone, something so vital to
>today's society it is difficult to imagine functioning without it, was
>tough to get going.

For an interesting look at this, see _When Old Technologies Were New_;
I've forgotten the author.  It's about electrification and the
telephone.

And remember, just because there's opposition, it could still be a bad
idea!  :-)  Let's not get too self-congratulatory here.

>On a related note, it is amazing how much information about you
>exists.  [...] Some supermarkets were even testing a
>system in which your purchases (scanned by the bar code reader) are
>saved and indexed by your credit card or check!  

It really is unsettling.  There is, in fact, a speculative market in
personal information.  Some of these companies doing supermarket
systems had the collection systems developed, and then went looking
for customers.

Eric