From: dmandl@lehman.com (David Mandl)
Date: Fri, 12 Nov 93 09:09:33 PST
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: Politics on the List?
Message-ID: <9311121708.AA12887@disvnm2.lehman.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


> From: sommerfeld@orchard.medford.ma.us (Bill Sommerfeld)
> 
>    But the vast majority of the 500+ folks on this List are either not
>    writing crypto code, or are keeping silent about it.
> 
> There are undoubtedly a fair number of the latter; probably better
> than 50% of the cypherpunks subscribers I know around here (including
> myself) get paid to (among other things) work on software related to
> network security through cryptography.

I've always had problems with the slogan "Cypherpunks write code."
It's a cute pun (if it was intended that way), but I think too many
cypherpunks are techie-snobs.  Writing code is all well and good,
even crucial, but there are plenty of other things that can and should
be done to further cypherpunk goals.  Many many people have found out
about cypherpunk developments through sympathetic articles in Wired,
the Village Voice, etc.  I've done long interviews with Tim May and
Phil Zimmerman on my radio show.  (And Perry Metzger and I are going
to be giving a talk on crypto anarchy here in NYC in January.  This
is being sponsored by a local anarchist group.  More details on this
later.)

Everything helps.  I was moved to invite Tim May to be on my show
last year not because of any beautiful code he'd written, but because
I was inspired by some of his political/theoretical writing.  You
don't have to write cypherpunk code to be a cypherpunk.  You don't even
have to write code at all.  There are plenty of other things to do that
are just as important and just as exciting.

P.S.: I'm not being defensive.  I write code for a living, just not
cypherpunk code (yet).

   --Dave.