From: rah@shipwright.com (Robert Hettinga)
Date: Tue, 16 Aug 94 07:42:53 PDT
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: The symbol "e$"
Message-ID: <199408161440.KAA10433@zork.tiac.net>
MIME-Version: 1.0
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First of all, I'd like to apologise to those who find the abbreviation e$
(short for electronic money on the internet) offensive. It is not a brand
name.  It is the result of an "aha!" which popped into the head of one of
my clients, an advertising consultant, while I was talking to her about
internet commerce one day a couple of months ago.  What she actually did
was hold up the paper she was doodling on, and in the middle of it was the
letter "e" with two dollar-sign lines through it. She'd been thinking about
it as the logo for a conference on internet commerce that she thought was a
cool idea (me too), but I saw it as a nice icon for electronic money in
general. I even merged the verticals in "$" and an "e" in Illustrator just
to see what it would look like.  Looks pretty cool. Since everything is
done in ASCII up here on the net, the nearest approximation of it was "e$"
and so I've been using it ever since.

I expect that the antipathy felt to it comes from a personal reaction to my
presence on this list. I'm afraid my enthusiasm, tendency to generalize
from sparse data and lack of crypto knowlege upset someone who felt that I
didn't fit in with his vision of the cypherpunk culture. I can't change who
I am anymore than he can change who he is. I do believe that I make a
contribution to this list, however, and try to restrain myself when I
don't.

I also believe that internet commerce and e$ (I think the word "excrable"
is more than a little rude) are valid topics of conversation for this list.
I have some experience in both areas, and can make a contribution to those
discussions, and since this is one of the few places on the net where the
state of the art in those topics is discussed and even advanced, I would
like to so in peace.  But that's wishful thinking, I bet.


Robert Hettinga

-----------------
Robert Hettinga  (rah@shipwright.com) "There is no difference between someone
Shipwright Development Corporation     who eats too little and sees Heaven and
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