Cypherpunks, e-money and the technologies of disconnection - encryption technology; includes related articles; excerpt from book, 'Out of Control'

Whole Earth Review, Summer, 1993 by Kevin Kelly

One of the consequences of network economics, as facilitated by ciphers and digital technology, is the transformation of what we mean by pretty good privacy. Networks shift privacy from the realm of morals to the marketplace; privacy becomes a commodity.

A telephone directory has value because of the energy it saves a caller in finding a particular phone number. When telephones were new, having an individual number to list in a directory was valuable to the lister and to all other telephone users (the Fax Effect). But today, in a world full of easily obtained telephone numbers, an unlisted phone number is more valuable to the unlisted (who pay more) and to the phone company (which charges more). Privacy is a commodity to be priced and sold.

Most privacy transactions will soon take place in the marketplace, rather than in government offices, because a centralized government is handicapped in a distributed, open-weave network, and can no longer guarantee how things are connected or not connected. Hundreds of privacy vendors will sell bits of privacy at market rates. You hire Little Brother, Inc. to demand maximum payment from junk-mail and direct marketers when you sell your name, and to monitor uses of that information as it tends to escape into the net. On your behalf, Little Brother, Inc. negotiates with other privacy vendors for hired services such as personal encrypters, absolutely unlisted numbers, bozo filters, stranger-ID screeners (such as caller ID on phones that only accept calls from certain numbers), and for hired mechanical agents (called network "knowbots") to trace addresses, and for counter-knowbots that unravel traces of your own activities.

Privacy is a type of information that has its polarity reversed; I imagine it as anti-information. The removal of a bit of information from a system can be seen as the reproduction of a corresponding bit of anti-information. In a world flooded with information ceaselessly replicating itself to the edges of the net, the absence or vaporization of a bit of information becomes very valuable, especially if that absence can be maintained. In a world where everything is connected to everything -- where connection and information and knowledge are dirt cheap -- then disconnection and anti-information and no-knowledge become expensive. When bandwidth becomes free and entire gigabytes of information are swapped around the clock, what you don't want to communicate becomes the most difficult chore. Encryption systems and their ilk are technologies of disconnection. They attempt to tame the network's innate tendency to connect and inform without discrimination.

The Next Utility Meter

We manage the disconnection of other domestic utilities, such as water or electricity, through metering. But metering is neither obvious nor easy. Thomas Edison's dazzling electrical gizmos were of little use to anyone until people had easy access to electricity in their factories and homes. So, at the peak of his career, Edison diverted his attention away from designing electrical delivery network itself. At first, very little was settled about how electricity should be created (DC or AC?), carried, or billed. For billing, Edison favored the approach that most information-providers today favor: charge a flat fee. Readers pay the same for a newspaper no matter how much of it they read. Ditto for cable TV, books and computer software. All are priced flat for all you can use.