18.18.1. What the core issues are...a tough thing to analyze
- untraceablility as a basic construct has major implications
+ can often ask what the implications would be if, say:
- invisibility existed
- untraceability existed
- By "tough to analyze" I mean that things are often
coflated, mixed together. Is it the "reputations" that
matter, or the "anonymity"? The "untraceability" or the
"digital money"?
18.18.2. Price signalling in posts...for further information
+ When an article is posted, and there is more complete
information available elsewhere by ftp, gopher, mosaic,
etc., then how is this to to be signalled without actually
advertising prominently?
- why not a code, like the "Geek code" so many people put
in their sigs? The code could be parsed by a reader and
used to automatically fetch the information, pay for it,
etc. (Agents that can be built in to newsreaders.)
18.18.3. "What should Cypherpunks support for "cable" or "set-top box"
standards?
- Caveats: My opinions, offered only to help frame the
debate. And many of us reject the idea of government-
mandated "standards," so my phrasing here is not meant to
imply support of such standards.
+ Major alternatives:
+ Set-top box, with t.v. as core of access to "information
superhighway."
+ Problems:
- limited number of channels, even if "500 channels"
- makes t.v. the focus, loses some other capabilities
- few consumers will have television sets with the
resolution capabilities that even current computer
monitors have (there are reasons for this: size of
monitors (related to viewing distance), NTSC
constraints, age of televisions, etc.)
+ Switched-packet cable, as in ATM or even SONET
(Synchronous Optical Network) access
+ Advantages:
- Television is just one more switched-packet
transmission, not using up the bandwidth
+ Radical Proposal: Complete deregulation
+ let cable suppliers--especially of optical fibers,
which are small and unobtrusive--lay fibers to any home
they can negotiate access to
- e.g., by piggybacking on telephone lines, electrical
cables, etc. (to remove the objection about unsightly
new poles or cables being strung...should not be an
issue with fiber optics)
- let the market decide...let customers decide
+ In my view, government standards are a terrible idea here.
Sure, NTSC was an effective standard, but it likely would
have emerged without government involvement. Ditto for
Ethernet and a zillion other standards. No need for
government involvement.
- Of course, when industry groups meet to discuss
standards, one hopes that antitrust laws will not be
invoked.
18.18.4. minor point: the importance of "But does it scale?" is often
exaggerated
- in many cases, it's much more important to simply get
something deployed than it is to worry in advance about how
it will break if too many people use it (e.g., MacDonald's
worrying in 1955 about scalabilty of their business).
- Remailer networks, for example, may not scale especially
well in their current form...but who cares? Getting them
used will allow further refinement.
By Tim May, see README
HTML by Jonathan Rochkind