Tim May wrote a (very long) "FAQ" for the Cypherpunks that may be of interest to folks who are interested in this sort of thing: http://www.cypherpunks.to/faq/

Tim May wrote a (very long) "FAQ" for the Cypherpunks that may be of interest to folks who are interested in this sort of thing: http://www.cypherpunks.to/faq/cyphernomicron/cyphernomicon.html http://www.cypherpunks.to/faq/cyphernomicron/cyphernomicon.h... The Cypherpunks list was remarkable for a time. Very high-volume, fractious, competitive, vicious, with at least one participant going to jail for a long time due to acting on some of the ideas. And very, very full of ideas ranging from mind-candy to very dangerous. May's Cyphernomicon[1] is really his interpretation of what was going on, colored heavily by his politics. Paraphrasing the joke, ask three cypherpunks what the word meant and you'd get four answers. But the document is an in-depth look at some of the implications of cryptography, a look at some deeply non-mainstream politics, and a contemporaneous recounting of the politics and technology development of a really interesting period of time and a really interesting mailing list that had, I think, a surprisingly outsized (if hard to pin down) role in shaping security policy[2]. [1] Stephenson's Cryptonomicon came out at roughly the same time as May's work, and it was one of those funny little accidents that the name collided. [2] I do think the Clipper chip fiasco and the ITAR changes wouldn't have played out the same way without the collaboration that happened on the list, and it was fertile ground that lead to several companies and weirder entities being formed.