[p2p-research] Request: Peer to Peer and Human Evolution

[Ryan Lanham]

On 2/23/10, Eugen Leitl <eugen at leitl.org> wrote:
>
> On Mon, Feb 22, 2010 at 07:09:54PM -0600, Kevin Carson wrote:
>
> > OTOH, one of the benefits of the emerging network society is its
> > opacity to the state, and its ability to function outside the
>
> Very few activities are truly opaque to the state these days,
> unfortunately. The trend is up, way up.


I quite agree...though with a very different conclusion.  I embrace the
ubiquitous state in an Age that is becoming rather frightening for the lack
of governance.  It is coming regardless as almost all major technology
research areas for the next gens of the web and cell network are highly
secure, deeply coded and very intensely guarded from predatory actions such
as phishing.  The trouble is, these technologies all entail centralization.
I see a very near term shift toward a paid participation Internet...much as
I too love the freeness...it is coming to an end within 2 decades.  Forward
thinking states will make it a commons and give it away.  Most won't.  In
this time of protecting job opportunities, it is too tempting to fragment it
so as to create jobs.  This is the story with US health insurance.  Everyone
grasps the government would indeed be more efficient...in fact we already
know it is more efficient...but it ultimately cuts private sector
jobs...which is the real motivation for legislators in democracies from
Iceland to California.

The power of supercomputers is such that virtually all non-stream data will
be inspected for content.  I understand groups are now hiding codes in
stream media so as to avoid auto-detection (e.g. terrorists).  That is, they
are sending simple codes via video.  It is easy to distribute and difficult
to break into.  Talking on a cell phone is public information the world
over.  Typing an email is public information the world over.  It is a matter
of time before rogue states (e.g. China) can do this trivially.  The key is
to get them to not be rogue...not to escalate the losing battle of trying
for ever more intense codes.

There is no media on earth now that travels through the air or a wire that
the U.S. intelligence services cannot access.  Keys are getting longer, but
the upper hand goes to those policing.  They have bigger machines...better
coders...more resources in general.  And they have more motivation.

> regulatory framework that creates artificial scarcity.  I see a
> > darknet economy of networked, encrypted currency transactions, in
>
> It could be only an economy which operates on the slack that
> the state has left. Even so the state so far has been extremely suspicious
> about e.g. unregulated monetary transactions, and tended to
> treat them as if they were criminal.


This is fantasy.  It is headed rapidly in the other direction.  I live in a
banking centre.  I can tell you that the bad guys (e.g. drug dealers) are
having a tough time managing their money.  No one (no one) will move large
amounts of value 10 years from now without very careful and nearly public
records of it being made.  Organizations like SWIFT are very secure and very
heavily invested in staying that way.  What is closing rapidly is the idea
of rogue banking operations.  Banks have been effectively made part of the
shadow government in this last recession...the world over.  What they do is
simply too important to allow it to happen without governance.  The steps
are slow, but they are real and permanent.

One of the fantasies of science fiction is continuous crime ongoing into the
future.  One reason violent crime is dropping precipitously in the U.S. is
that investigation power is growing immensely...in short, bad guys are
getting caught more frequently.  Sadly the US has cast a wide net and some
non-bad guys (e.g. simple drug users) are in it.  Far too many.  Crime is up
in the third world and minor destinations where technology is far behind and
systems are poor.  Even in those places, the battle is heated.  Mexico is
making major progress toward ridding itself of drug lords who just a year or
two ago threatened to topple the state into another one of those desirable
Somalia's.

If we RFID coded all modes of transport and put recorder pylons on street
corners.  We could quickly narrow down suspects to major crimes in a matter
of minutes.  In that world, I say stamp me, baby.  I've got nothing to
hide.  The nations that allow themselves to be governed badly...I pity.
Either way, it is coming.  It's simply coming.


> certification and authenticating mechanisms, as the basis for the
> > post-state society.
>
> So far there are preciously few such institutions. OpenCA comes
> to mind, which is pretty obscure.



Actually there are many.  Banking is full of them.  So are militaries.  On
the other side, Kerberos was one of the first things we worked on when the
Internet took off.  If you meant "open" versions.  I agree.  Open
authentication is a strange concept, however.  So is P2P authentication.
First, someone would have to define what it means.  The best ways to do this
are with familiarity.  If it is commerce, then the best means are private
communities--shopping networks like Amazon.  If there is no value involved,
why authenticate?  If there is value, why not use the market?

When I hear post-state, I think of corporations ruling the world.  People
will organize.  Organizations will grow.  Someone will have to police.
Peer-to-Peer is great because it minimizes that in uncontested or minimally
contested spaces.  Regardless, the world is rapidly headed the other way.
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