We Advance By Innovating and Improving

We Advance By Innovating and Improving

I smile whenever someone says, “Ah, well, you can do it another way, so what’s the point?”. It is often a simplistic retort when we talk about integrating proper cryptographic methods. Perhaps, if we took that attitude with the advancements of our society, we would still be living in caves.

And, when it comes to companies like AT&T and Xerox, this attitude will often mean that they will eventually fail to innovate and lose their markets. AT&T, for example, were offered packet switching but could not see how it could replace their massive circuit-switched network, and Xerox failed to see the potential of the GUI, mouse, Ethernet, and many other things. “But, I can use a modem to send data”, might have been the retort from AT&T, so why would I need packet switching?”

Before the invention of the wheel, we used our legs, and I am sure there were those who said, “But what problem does the wheel solve? I can travel by walking or running”, or with the aeroplane, “I can use a ship to go over water”. What we miss most is that we have a tool bag of amazing cryptography these days, and there is no single magic bullet that can apply to every application and we live in a digital world that isolates every transaction in its own little world.

And, so, for digital identity, of course, I can have a driver’s ID number, but that’s all it is … a number that exists on a single centralised database. But with a digital identity, I can now place the ownership of the identity with the actual owner of the licence, and then prove with almost certainty that we interact with that person (through digital signatures). And, if we want privacy, we don’t need brown envelopes; we just use near cryptographic certainty.

It will take a while, but we need to dump the legacy of the flawed computing methods we have used over the past five decades and build a more trusted, integrated and resilient machine. Then, humankind will have built its greatest-ever machine … a Trusted Internet.

I’m a cypher punk, and I believe in the power of public key encryption to bring great benefits to our society.