[44805] in Cypherpunks
Re: The "Future" Fallacy
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Ernest Hua)
Wed Dec 6 13:09:28 1995
To: Black Unicorn <unicorn@schloss.li>
Cc: cypherpunks@toad.com
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Wed, 06 Dec 1995 04:23:37 EST."
<Pine.SUN.3.91.951206042314.18935A-100000@polaris.mindport.net>
Date: Wed, 06 Dec 1995 10:01:20 -0800
From: Ernest Hua <hua@chromatic.com>
> > > Bill Gates (like Mister Newt before him) committed what I call the Future
> > > Fallacy in "The Road Ahead." Page 106.
> > >
> > > "Soon any child old enough to use a computer will be able to transmit
> > > coded messages that no government on earth will find easy to decipher."
> > >
> > > Billg is an optimist.
> >
> > I found nothing wrong or incorrect with the quote Duncan attributed to Bill
> > Gates (I haven't read Gates' book).
>
> I think Duncan was mad at the 'soon.' Why not today?
I think I can answer this question because I was an obnoxious little
hacker with an Atari 800 when I was a kid. The only thing I did not
have was a modem and an Internet connection (thus ability to read
sci.crypt.research etc ...)
I did have arbitrary precision math libraries (although I did not
have any engineering concept of "libraries"), and I had written some
non-trivial scrambling code (it's not RSA, of course). I am, by no
means, a super-smart person. Therefore, it is not a stretch to
believe that kids today can perform powerful encryption in the
privacy of their own homes.
Therefore, to Bill G and his "prophecy": "been there, done that" ...
(Apologies to those who hate that phrase; I hate it too, but it is
so obnoxious that it gets the point across.)
Ern
