From: Ernest Hua <hua@chromatic.com>
Date: Wed, 6 Dec 95 10:00:28 PST
To: Black Unicorn <unicorn@schloss.li>
Subject: Re: The "Future" Fallacy
In-Reply-To: <Pine.SUN.3.91.951206042314.18935A-100000@polaris.mindport.net>
Message-ID: <9512061801.AA07656@krypton.chromatic.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



> > > Bill Gates (like Mister Newt before him) committed what I call the Future
> > > Fallacy in "The Road Ahead."  Page 106.
> > >
> > > "Soon any child old enough to use a computer will be able to transmit
> > > coded messages that no government on earth will find easy to decipher."
> > >
> > > Billg is an optimist.
> >
> > I found nothing wrong or incorrect with the quote Duncan attributed to Bill
> > Gates (I haven't read Gates' book).
>
> I think Duncan was mad at the 'soon.'  Why not today?

I think I can answer this question because I was an obnoxious little
hacker with an Atari 800 when I was a kid.  The only thing I did not
have was a modem and an Internet connection (thus ability to read
sci.crypt.research etc ...)

I did have arbitrary precision math libraries (although I did not
have any engineering concept of "libraries"), and I had written some
non-trivial scrambling code (it's not RSA, of course).  I am, by no
means, a super-smart person.  Therefore, it is not a stretch to
believe that kids today can perform powerful encryption in the
privacy of their own homes.

Therefore, to Bill G and his "prophecy": "been there, done that" ...
(Apologies to those who hate that phrase; I hate it too, but it is
so obnoxious that it gets the point across.)

Ern