Mr. May opined:
>At 10:21 PM -0700 7/25/00, Ray Dillinger wrote:
>>There are a number of programs out there that implement "encrypted
>>message" and "digital signature" protocols, but I've been reading
>>here and there about all these other protocols:
>>
>>Digital Cash
>>Secure Marketplace
>>Secure Auction
>>Fair Cointoss
>>Oblivious Transfer
>>Secret Sharing
>>Secret splitting
>>Proof of Membership
<...>
>This is the key question, no pun intended. A kind of language for
>generating complex protocols was something Eric Hughes and I
>discussed at length before even holding the first meeting of what
>became the Cypherpunks group. Your list above accurately summarizes
>all the protocols which _ought_ to be generatable.
>
>To elaborate on "generatable," something like a "CAD program for
>crypto" is what we were talking about. Bob Baldwin, when he was at
>MIT, had a "Cryptographer's Workbench"--more focussed on what we
>think of ciphers than on the building blocks for financial crypto,
>trading systems, reputations, etc. But in the direction we're
>talking about.
>
>The ideas Eric and I were so excited about can be summarized thusly:
>"Let's take the abstract math and CS ideas from the various Crypto
>Conference papers and actually reify them in working code."
There was a presentation at the Bay Area Cypherpunks meat
meet about "E", a capabilities based language. Is that along the
lines of what you are looking for?
I can't find anything on the web, but searching for "E" isn't
going to get you a lot of useful stuff, and the rest of the things
linked in memory to that concept.
Ah. Found something:
Mark Miller described his "E" programming language -- a capabilities system
built on the idea that pure objects are equivalent to pure capabilities.
The system is the latest in a series of capabilities based adventures, and
is proposed as an ideal environment for working on smart contracts, self
enforcing documents which can be executed and evaluated by a machine,
rather than a lawyer.
Unfortunately, that's the only reference I can find in the
time I have available to look.
--
A quote from Petro's Archives: *******************************************
Today good taste is often erroneously rejected as old-fashioned because
ordinary man, seeking approval of his so-called personality, prefers to follow
the dictates of his own peculiar style rather than submit to any objective
criterion of taste.--Jan Tschichold
