Those were intended to be grand, sweeping generalizations, in keeping with my understanding of your guidelines of looking for ideas that have had a significant impact at the societal level.
The invention of the concept of asymmetric cryptography by Diffie, Merkel and Hellman, together with its realization as a practical scheme by Rivest, Shamir, and Adleman, certainly constituted Invention with a capital I, and was perhaps one of the top 10 intellectual inventions of all time, IMHO. (That would be an interesting list to debate, wouldn't it?!) The Innovation provided by the crystallization of public key cryptography into a public key infrastructure, and its subsequent adoption within web browsers and server as a means of securing electronic commerce was a collaborative effort involving many hundreds of people, including members of the American Bar Association's Information Security Committee, the X.500 and X.509 standards bodies, the IETF's PKIX committee, and numerous implementers in all of the major software companies. Leaders in that effort included Steven Kent, Hoyt Kesterson, Michael Baum, Sharon Boyen, Warwick Ford, and others too numerous to recall. I'm proud to have played a role in that effort as well. The realization that other forms of public key cryptography were possible (e.g., DSA and ECC) again took a considerable amount of effort and represented noteworthy accomplishments by El Gamal. and later Koblitz and Miller. But the basic principle was already established by then. They stood on the shoulders of giants, and then lifted the bar even higher. So to my mind, that represented significant Process Improvement at the societal level, again with a capital P and capital I, as opposed to the more mundane progression from RSA-512 to 1024 and then 2048 as computers got faster. Bob Message: 2 Date: Fri, 18 Apr 2008 18:58:39 -0700 From: "Ali, Saqib" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: [FDE] Invention, innovation, process improvement To: [email protected] Message-ID: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Thank you Sir! This is exactly the information that I was looking for. If you have more, please do share. I can certainly use that my innovation vs. improvement presentation next week. I find it interested that you categorized ECC as process improvement rather then invention. Can you please elaborate on why that is the case? Thanks again. On Fri, Apr 18, 2008 at 11:43 AM, Robert Jueneman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Invention: The field of public key cryptography, by Diffie, Hellman, & > Merkel, with subsequent refinements by Rivest, Shamir, Adleman, El > Gamal, Koblitz, and Miller, to name but a few. > > Innovation: The development of X.509 PKI, and its incorporation within > Internet servers and browsers to facilitate global electronic commerce > via the web. > > Process improvement: The replacement of RSA-based public key technology > with the stronger and more efficient elliptic curve cryptography. > > Bob > > Message: 4 > Date: Thu, 17 Apr 2008 21:09:41 -0700 > From: "Ali, Saqib" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Subject: [FDE] Invention vs. Innovation vs, Process Improvement > To: fde <[email protected]> > Message-ID: > <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 > > Hello All, > > I am looking for some examples of the following in the security field: > 1) Invention; > 2) Innovation; and > 3) Process Improvement. > > Can you please provide examples Security related technologies that > fall into each of these categories. > > Note: That I am using the strict definition of Innovation, which is: > "Innovation occurs when someone uses an invention - or uses existing > tools in a new way - to change how the world works, how people > organize themselves, and how they conduct their lives. Innovation is > distinct from improvement in that it causes society to reorganize. > Innovation is taking an invention and finding new uses for it." > Wikipedia. > > Please make sure when you provide examples of innovation it conforms > to the above definition. ------------------------------ _______________________________________________ FDE mailing list [email protected] http://www.xml-dev.com/mailman/listinfo/fde End of FDE Digest, Vol 19, Issue 8 ********************************** _______________________________________________ FDE mailing list [email protected] http://www.xml-dev.com/mailman/listinfo/fde
