Re: Refutations Considered Unnecessary
At 1:49 PM -0500 1/10/01, John Young wrote: Well, yes, I owe the cypherpunks founders an apology, so apology sent. Our rump session after Steve's talk last night, to which he didn't come, put me face to face with 20 nyms and let me tell you online has its virtues -- the main one being never having to have people stare at your TLA forehead mark and you at theirs. Everybody in the room said they're working on a book, really, but what they needed was a writer to burnish the jewels. There was a writer there but incognito, knowing what happens in NYC at any gathering when pols, doctors, lawyers and thieves lock onto someone who has authentic literary skills. Well, I went through my "working on a book" phase in 1988-91, when I was working feverishly for many hours a day on my Great Crypto Anarchic Novel. (At least many of the ideas for the novel turned out to be useful for the Next Phase, which was Cypherpunks.) I, at least, never fell prey to the Usual Malarkey of thinking that all I needed to do was feed some ideas to a Real Writer who would then help me finish it, or collaborate. Fact is, generating a book is hard work. In terms of lining up the publishers, editors, etc. The actual writing may not be too hard, based on some of the fluff I see out there. (Some of the 120-page pieces of fluff by Silicon Valley types, for example, which look like something easily generated by anyone with even modest writing skills. In fact, I'm sure most of these books by Valley CEOs are, naturally, ghost-written.) Even a total stranger at the bar up front had a story which he said makes the stuff in CRYPTO mere child's play. NSA-trained he claimed to be and a long time battler of corporate evildoing. Great piles of files to prove it, only a ghost writer needed. See! At least we don't hear this kind of tripe at Bay Area gatherings. People are too aware of how foolish this stuff sounds. --Tim May -- Timothy C. May [EMAIL PROTECTED]Corralitos, California Political: Co-founder Cypherpunks/crypto anarchy/Cyphernomicon Technical: physics/soft errors/Smalltalk/Squeak/agents/games/Go Personal: b.1951/UCSB/Intel '74-'86/retired/investor/motorcycles/guns
Re: Refutations Considered Unnecessary
On Wed, Jan 10, 2001 at 10:06:25AM -0800, Tim May wrote: e) Brin's book would be just another drop in the ocean, anyway. His vision of the future is unlikely in the extreme (t.v. cameras in police offices...sure, whatever), so refuting his "bad memes" is just a waste of time Right. Everyone's forgotten it; books like that (and Crypto, and Database Nation) have a short half-life. As for his views toward "crypto anarchy," what else would one expect? If the future many of us think is likely is in fact _actually_ likely, then what does it matter whether Levy makes dismissive comments on his book tour or not? I didn't find him making dismissive comments in his book, which is what will be read, anyway. (And even if he did, see previous point...) He didn't make dismissive comments, and was actually more critical (though mildly) when we had conversations about it in the past. The thing, though, is that Crypto only spends a paragraph or two -- really -- on crypto anarchy. It's not a focus of the book, or even the chapter, its name notwithstanding. -Declan
Re: Refutations Considered Unnecessary
At 3:52 PM -0500 1/10/01, Declan McCullagh wrote: On Wed, Jan 10, 2001 at 10:06:25AM -0800, Tim May wrote: e) Brin's book would be just another drop in the ocean, anyway. His vision of the future is unlikely in the extreme (t.v. cameras in police offices...sure, whatever), so refuting his "bad memes" is just a waste of time Right. Everyone's forgotten it; books like that (and Crypto, and Database Nation) have a short half-life. And of course there are at least a _dozen_ books on the general issue of "privacy." One of the Kennedy's co-authored one (or at least agreed to have her name put on the cover, perhaps). Whit Diffie co-authored one. And so on. A dozen, at least. Nothing new, either. There are even a bunch of recent popularizations of crypto, steganography, PGP, etc. Do they really matter? At the margins, sure. Some kid in junior high school is perhaps discovering Singh's book on "Secret Codes" (or whatever the exact title is) the same way Whit Diffie read one of those early crypto books when he was a kid. Ditto for political books. It's not that I'm jaded, it's that there are TOO MANY DAMNED BOOKS out there. I spend a lot of time in Borders and Bookshop Santa Cruz, two very large and well-stocked bookstores in my town. (Declan can confirm this, though he may not have seen the new Borders yet.) I browse, in the classical sense, the New Books section most times I'm in there. The turnover is incredible. The range of topics is incredible, from climbings of an obscure peak in the Himalayas, to what women want in their sociology classes, to what the AOL-Time Warner deals means for prospects of peace on the Korean peninsula. And, every month, new books on quantum weirdness, new books on online privacy, new books on the history of the Web, etc. A flood of writers, a flood of books. The topics get more specialized in the same way Ph.D. theses have gotten so specialized. The grand unifications are few and far between. Who reads this stuff? We are drowning in a sea of factoids and well-researched books on obscure Beat Generation poets and books on the impact of technology. Big deal. Very few current books actually are _important_. (There are some, IMO. "The Elegant Universe," "Noah's Flood," "Emerging Viruses," in recent years. The novels of Stephenson, Vinge, Gibson, in past years. "Atlas Shrugged," whatever flaws it may have. Etc.) With the reported declines in reading amongst school children (various reasons, from poor schooling to lots of other choices like videos and games), and this explosion of titles, and with bookstores bigger than they ever were when I was a kidhmmmhhh, lots of interesting forces about to collide. --Tim May -- Timothy C. May [EMAIL PROTECTED]Corralitos, California Political: Co-founder Cypherpunks/crypto anarchy/Cyphernomicon Technical: physics/soft errors/Smalltalk/Squeak/agents/games/Go Personal: b.1951/UCSB/Intel '74-'86/retired/investor/motorcycles/guns
Re: Refutations Considered Unnecessary
On Wed, 10 Jan 2001, Tim May wrote: It's not that I'm jaded, it's that there are TOO MANY DAMNED BOOKS out there. I spend a lot of time in Borders and Bookshop Santa Cruz, two very large and well-stocked bookstores in my town. (Declan can confirm this, though he may not have seen the new Borders yet.) I browse, in the classical sense, the New Books section most times I'm in there. The turnover is incredible. The range of topics is incredible, from climbings of an obscure peak in the Himalayas, to what women want in their sociology classes, to what the AOL-Time Warner deals means for prospects of peace on the Korean peninsula. And, every month, new books on quantum weirdness, new books on online privacy, new books on the history of the Web, etc. A flood of writers, a flood of books. The topics get more specialized in the same way Ph.D. theses have gotten so specialized. The grand unifications are few and far between. Something in the way you write that reminds me of my brother. He watches Television. He doesn't watch actual shows. He flips to a random channel, watches it for 15-30 seconds, flips to another random channel, watches *that* for 15-30 seconds, repeat for hours... He's not interested in actual shows, but he is fascinated by Television - what kind of images people compose, what kind of ads different channels have, choices in background music and how they've changed over years of soap operas, fashions in body type represented by shows of different eras, etc. It forms some kind of gestalt to him, some fairly sensible idea of how the filters on human experience are and how they've been changing. Me, it just drives bugfuck. Who reads this stuff? The literate subsection of society has clearly become more diverse, during the same period in which the aliterate have become less so. This is interesting. Very few current books actually are _important_. Perhaps true, but no two people have the same list. With the reported declines in reading amongst school children (various reasons, from poor schooling to lots of other choices like videos and games), and this explosion of titles, and with bookstores bigger than they ever were when I was a kidhmmmhhh, lots of interesting forces about to collide. Collided, I'd have said, in the last ten years. It's just that we can't fully see the consequences yet. Bear
