From: Jim McCoy <mccoy@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu>
Date: Mon, 25 Oct 93 02:28:57 PDT
To: ld231782@longs.lance.colostate.edu (L. Detweiler)
Subject: Re: A favor re Detweiler
In-Reply-To: <9310250834.AA10487@longs.lance.colostate.edu>
Message-ID: <199310250926.AA20883@tramp.cc.utexas.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text


"L. Detweiler" <ld231782@longs.lance.colostate.edu> writes:
[...]
> 
> I have tried in total desperation to find someone I respect to condemn
> pseudospoofing for the evil it is. No one has done so. My respect for
> many individuals has dropped accordingly. My respect for many black
> phantoms has dropped accordingly. [...]

> I encourage any other `cypherpunks' who find this practice of
> pseudospoofing reprehensible to unsubscribe from the list in protest,
> and carry out further debate on the `agenda' in newsgroups.

After reading this message, along with several others you have recently
sent to the list (and broadcasted in comp.org.eff.talk) I think that I am
not alone in bringing to your attention the fact that "you just don't get
it." 

Identity as most people know it, and as you are attempting to tightly cling
to, is dead.  Gone.  History.  Stick a fork in it 'cause it's done.

It has no equivalent on the electronic frontier.  Complaining about it and
bemoaning whatever loss you may feel will do nothing to change this fact.
I know this must be difficult for some people to understand; I routinely
get strange looks from people when I reveal that some of my closest friends
are people who I have never "met" in the traditional sense, and that I
regularly play games, exchange messages, and discuss whatever is on my mind
with people from across the globe who have no more physical substance to me
than wisps of phosphor on a crt.  

This is a fundemental paradigm shift that you have not made yet.  It is one
that few have.  If anything, it is shared conceptual memes such as this
subject of identity in a world without substance that is the true
cypherpunk cause.  

> ``Oh what a tangled web we weave; when first we practice to deceive.''
> --``Shakespeare''

Sorry, by this was not written by Shakespeare.  It was penned by Sir Walter
Scott. 

jim

``In a false quarrel there is no true valour''
--Shakespeare