SOCIETY: crypto impact

Like any new technology, selling crypto to the public will be
difficult at first.  I'll bet the telephone, something so vital to
today's society it is difficult to imagine functioning without it, was
tough to get going.

PROPONENT: "Just imagine the service and convenience!"

OPPONENT: "What services and conveniences?  I visit the people I want
           to talk to and conduct my business withing 5 miles of home."

At the time there were no neat services or conveniences.  Buying into
new technology will cause resistance, since people are not going to
miss what they do not have.

However, I think some crypto technology will be easier to sell than
others.  It should be easy to convince people of the need for good
encryption, the kind that can protect you or your company's financial
information, mail, ideas, etc.  Also, digital signatures and
authentication techniques should face little resistance.

Now, anonymous remailers and other privacy methods will be a little
harder :-)  (witness the debate over anonymous speech occuring right
now!)

On a related note, it is amazing how much information about you
exists.  Did anyone else watch a PBS documentary about this (sorry, I
can't remember the name of it)?  In the report, a writer researched
how direct mail marketing departments seek out infomation - from going
to the county court house and obtaining property and deed information,
to using census information to classify your living habits,
professional organizations you belong to, catalogs for mailing lists
of various interests, etc.  Some supermarkets were even testing a
system in which your purchases (scanned by the bar code reader) are
saved and indexed by your credit card or check!  Banks could then sell
this extremely valuable information to direct mail houses.

/-----------------------------------\
| Karl L. Barrus                    |
| elee9sf@menudo.uh.edu             | <- preferred address
| barrus@tree.egr.uh.edu (NeXTMail) |
\-----------------------------------/

> On a related note, it is amazing how much information about you
> exists.  Did anyone else watch a PBS documentary about this (sorry, I
> can't remember the name of it)?  In the report, a writer researched
> how direct mail marketing departments seek out infomation - from going
> to the county court house and obtaining property and deed information,
> to using census information to classify your living habits,
> professional organizations you belong to, catalogs for mailing lists
> of various interests, etc.  Some supermarkets were even testing a
> system in which your purchases (scanned by the bar code reader) are
> saved and indexed by your credit card or check!  Banks could then sell
> this extremely valuable information to direct mail houses.

  Check out the books "Privacy for Sale" and "The Naked Consumer" for
thorough treatments of this topic. Or read the *.privacy groups for a
while....

		Peter

>Like any new technology, selling crypto to the public will be
>difficult at first.  I'll bet the telephone, something so vital to
>today's society it is difficult to imagine functioning without it, was
>tough to get going.

For an interesting look at this, see _When Old Technologies Were New_;
I've forgotten the author.  It's about electrification and the
telephone.

And remember, just because there's opposition, it could still be a bad
idea!  :-)  Let's not get too self-congratulatory here.

>On a related note, it is amazing how much information about you
>exists.  [...] Some supermarkets were even testing a
>system in which your purchases (scanned by the bar code reader) are
>saved and indexed by your credit card or check!  

It really is unsettling.  There is, in fact, a speculative market in
personal information.  Some of these companies doing supermarket
systems had the collection systems developed, and then went looking
for customers.

Eric