The, perhaps ultimately futile, rise of the cypherpunk.
The, perhaps ultimately futile, rise of the cypherpunk.:
Back in distant, halcyon 2010, I was asked to write something about Wikileaks and its Cablegate scandal. So, I wrote a rather melancholy ess…
Cyberpunk’s pop documentary master Bruce Sterling has a long essay on what he calls Cypherpunk. A revolution in which, like phreakers broke open Ma Bell, and hackers liberated data simply because they could, rebel decoders and data custodians challenge the nature of democracy in the digital age.
But more than that, claims Sterling, they challenge it and they fail, because declassification isn’t enough to challenge the stand-alone strength of “institutional deceits.”
