From: rah@shipwright.com (Robert Hettinga)
Date: Fri, 1 Jul 94 15:03:43 PDT
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: What motivates crypto-folk?
Message-ID: <199407012203.SAA07813@zork.tiac.net>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


At 11:45 AM 7/1/94 -0800, Jamie Lawrence wrote:

>My own personal opinion is that waiting for governments to collapse
>due to crypto and tech is gonna have you waiting a long, long time.

God. What I do when the brain's offline.  I'm looking at my wife's copy of
this month's Harvard magazine, which is about, of all things, trees.  It
seems that
the american chestnut used to be a great big tree. Remember the doggerel
about the spreading chestnut tree and the smithy?  Anyway, at the turn of
the century an imported fungal disease killed all the chestnut trees to the
ground.  Someone in the article is quoted as saying "...chestnuts are
continuing to sprout from the base and the tree is in the process of
becoming a shrub."

This apt metaphor is what I expect will happen to large organizations as a
result of hyperdistributed (ubiquitous) computer networks and strong
crypto.  Of course, like the "expectation" that extraterrestrial life
exists in the universe, it might as well be a religious tenent until we
actually see it happen. Having political discussions like this one only
gets us in the mood to make it happen if it's possible, but it certainly
don't make it so.

I don't think I could call myself a crypto-anarchist, even after that
somewhat hardline paragraph.  I call myself a "congenital republican".
That's inconsistent enough to keep my friends and family happy, and myself
gainfully employed.  What I realy think is my own business.

As usual, Tim is right.  This really isn't crypto.  It's just "about" crypto.

>Jamie "Is a Mayist Like a Janist?" Lawrence
>
>--
>"Blah Blah Blah"
>___________________________________________________________________
>Jamie Lawrence                                  <jamiel@sybase.com>

Bob "I ain't no Jainist, I just ate bugs(fleas?) for lunch" Hettinga ;-).






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