17.3.1. "Why have most of the things Cypherpunks talk about *not*
happened?"
+ Except for remailers and basic crypto, few of the main
ideas talked about for so long have actually seen any kind
of realization. There are many reasons:
A. Difficult to achieve. Both Karl Kleinpaste and Eric
Hughes implemented simple first-generation remailers in a
matter of _days_, but "digital cash" and "aptical
foddering," for example, are not quite so
straightforward. (I am of course not taking anything away
from Kleinpaste, Hughes, Helsingius, Finney, etc., just
noting that redirecting mail messages--and even
implementing PGP and things like delay, batching, etc.,
into remailers--is a lot easier conceptually than DC-Nets
and the like.
B. Protocols are confusing, tough to implement. Only a tiny
fraction of the "crypto primitives" discussed at Crypto
Conferences, or in the various crypto books, have been
realized as runnable code. Building blocks like "bit
commitment" have not even--to my knowledge--been
adequately realized as reusable code. (Certainly various
groups, such as Chaum's, have cobbled-together things
like bit commitment....I just don't think there's a
consensus as to the form, and this has limited the
ability of nonspecialists to use these "objects.")
C. Semantic confusion as well. While it's fairly clear what
"encrypting" or "remailing" means, just what is a
"digital bank"? Or a "reputation server"?
D. Interoperablity is problematic. Many platforms, many
operating systems, many languages. Again, remailers and
encryption work because there is a de facto lowest common
denominator for them: the simple text block, used in e-
mail, editors, input and output from programs, etc. That
is, we all mostly know exactly what an ASCII text block
is, and crypto programs are expected to know how to
access and manipulate such blocks. This largely explains
the success of PGP across many platforms--text blocks are
the basic element. Ditto for Cypherpunks remialers, which
operate on the text blocks found in most mail systems.
The situation becomes much murkier for things like
digital money, which are not standalone objects and are
often multi-party protocols involving time delays,
offline processing, etc.
E. Lack of an economic motive. We on this list are not being
paid to develop anything, are not assisted by anyone, and
don't have the financial backing of corporations to
assist us. Since much of today's "software development"
is actually _deal-making_ and _standards negotiation_, we
are left out of lots of things.
By Tim May, see README
HTML by Jonathan Rochkind