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Information on EXTROPY: THE JOURNAL OF TRANSHUMANI

To get a copy of Extropy #10, send $4.50 to Extropy Institute, PO Box 57306,
Los Angeles CA 90057-0306. Make checks payable to Extropy Institute.
Subscriptions in the USA are $13.50 for 3 issues. Membership in the Extropy
Institute (in the USA) costs $30 and includes six issues of the bimonthly
newsletter Exponent as well as a subscription to Extropy magazine.

A quote from Hal Finney's article in Extropy #10, "Protecting Privacy with
Electronic Cash":

An electronic bank could, like banks of old, have valuable materials in its
vaults. Today, these would likely be dollars or other government currency,
but they could be gold or other commodities [or bearer stock in mutual funds
-- ed.]. Using these as backing, it would issue bank notes. These would be
electronic messages, digitally signed by the bank's secret key, promising to
transfer a specified sum to the account of whomever presented to note to the
bank (or, if desired, to redeem the note in dollars or other valuables.)

Here is how it might work. You open an account with an electronic bank,
depositing some money as in any bank. The bank then credits your account with
your initial balance. Now, suppose you are going to want to make an
electronic payment to me. Prior to any transactions, you would send a message
to the bank, requesting one or more bank notes in specified denominations.
(This is exactly analogous to withdrawing cash from your regular bank
account.) The bank debits your account, creates new bank note messages, and
sends them to you. They are sent to you as signed messages, encrypted with
the bank's secret key. When decrypted with the bank's public key, which
everyone knows, a one-dollar digital bank note would say, in effect, "This
note is worth $1.00, payable on demand." I would also include a unique serial
number, like the serial number on a dollar bill.

<<end quote>>

Finney goes on to explain how the serial number prevents anyone from using a
digital bank note more than once, no matter how many copies they make of it.
He explains some the public-key cryptography technology behind anonymous
remailers, and how the anonymous mailing of digital cash can completely
protect privacy without impeding economic interaction.

I know is looks as if "untraceable" digital cash can be traced by following
the serial numbers. However, David Chaum has invented a cryptographic
technique called "blind signature" which enables the bank to credit a given
digital banknote exactly once, without being able to connect the deposit or
redemption of a digital banknote with the withdrawal that created it. Finney
does not go into the math behind this in his article in Extropy, but in
private e-mail he said he would forward the appropriate articles sometime in
the next few weeks. I will forward them to anyone else who is interested in
the details.

- info -

ExI's address info and pricing follows this crass advertisement, for
those who are interested in subscribing or ordering back issues.

Date: Tue, 25 May 93 21:58:41 PDT
From: [email protected] (Max More)
Subject: EXI/INFO: Updated details - Extropy and Institute

EXTROPY INSTITUTE & EXTROPY JOURNAL INFORMATION

Do you want to make the future immeasurably better than the past?
Do you want to live beyond the normal human limit?
Are you attracted to innovative, market-oriented solutions to social problems?
Do you want to upgrade your intellectual power?
Do you want to dispel the clouded thinking of the eco-doomsayers and pessimists?
Do you want to throw off ingrained barriers to effective thinking and action?
Do you want to continuously improve yourself - physically, intellectually, morally?
Do you think that technology can and should help us overcome biological,
genetic, and neurological limits to our abilities and goals?

THEN EXTROPY INSTITUTE IS FOR YOU!

Technological and social change continue to accelerate, thrusting us
into a future of unprecedented possibility and choice. Increasingly,
gerontologists agree that aging will be partly or wholly controlled in
the next few decades. Drastic extension of the human lifespan will be
accompanied by the ability to radically increase human intelligence
using advanced nootropics (smart drugs) and neurological augmentation
with implanted miniaturized computers. Advances in genetic engineering,
biochemistry, and nanotechnology (molecular machines) will enable us to
heighten our senses, boost our strength, bolster our immune systems, and
increase our resistance to injury and death.

Computing power and communication bandwidth continue to grow
explosively, enabling the development of virtual reality, making
accessible oceans of information, allowing the creation of electronic
markets and distributed virtual communities. We can expect to see the
evolution of truly intelligent artificial persons, and to overcome
biological and neurological limits through human-machine symbiosis.
These and other technology-driven revolutions, such as space habitation
and nanofabrication, offer the potential both for progress and peril.
Extropy Institute endeavors to prepare our human culture for the dawning
of the transhuman era, in which today's beliefs, technological
achievements, and culture will seem as primitive as those of the Middle
Ages seem today.

EXTROPY INSTITUTE:

Extropy Institute (ExI) seeks to guide humanity into an unbounded
future, by encouraging the public, through education and example, to use
technology to overcome historically unchallenged limits to full human
flourishing. Extropy Institute focuses the most creative,
forward-thinking intellects in working to overcome traditional, genetic,
biological, and neurological limits to the pursuit of life, liberty, and
boundless achievement.

Since 1988, when Extropy first appeared, the Extropian philosophy has
attracted those wanting to be their best, those who are bold enough to
challenge entrenched dogmas concerning the inevitability of death, of
centralized, coercive government, and of fixed limits to human
achievement and ability.

Extropy Institute is building a culture favoring physical and
intellectual augmentation, life extension, and a free and responsible
society (here, in cyberspace, or off-Earth), by means of publications,
meetings, and special projects including:

EXTROPY.
Our unique and thriving major publication provides intelligent, thorough
analysis and advocacy of advanced and future technologies and their use
in creating a future worthy of human potential (see below).

EXPONENT.
Our members' newsletter, published 6-9 times per year, carries timely
reviews of books and software, current ExI and science news, and short
articles.

ELECTRONIC FORA.
Electronic activities include a highly active e-mail list (founded in
1991) frequented by the brightest, most iconoclastic minds, and an essay
list for longer papers. The Extropians e-mail list has branched out
into local e-mail lists, carrying announcements of local meetings and
celebrations.

ACTIVITIES.

Our first conference, EXTRO 1, will take place in Spring
1994. ExI hosts other special conferences and celebrations, and is
forming local and university discussion groups around the country and
abroad. We also offer books, tapes, and other items of interest to
members.

THE EXTROPIAN PRINCIPLES 2.5 (short form)

BOUNDLESS EXPANSION: Seeking more intelligence, wisdom, and
effectiveness, an unlimited lifespan, and the removal of political,
cultural, biological, and psychological limits to self-actualization and
self-realization. Perpetually overcoming constraints on our progress
and possibilities. Expanding into the universe and advancing without
end.

SELF-TRANSFORMATION: Affirming continual psychological, intellectual,
and physical self-improvement, through reason and critical thinking,
personal responsibility, and experimentation. Seeking biological and
neurological augmentation.

DYNAMIC OPTIMISM: Positive expectations fueling dynamic action.
Adopting a rational, action-based optimism, shunning both blind faith
and stagnant pessimism.

INTELLIGENT TECHNOLOGY: Applying science and technology creatively to
transcend "natural" limits imposed by our biological heritage, culture,
and environment.

SPONTANEOUS ORDER: Supporting decentralized, voluntaristic social
coordination processes. Fostering tolerance, diversity, foresight,
personal responsibility and individual liberty.

Extropianism is a transhumanist philosophy: Like humanism, it values
reason and humanity and sees no grounds for belief in unknowable,
supernatural forces externally controlling our destiny, but
transhumanism goes further in urging us to push beyond the merely human
stage of evolution. As physicist Freeman Dyson has said: "Humanity
looks to me like a magnificent beginning but not the final word."

EXTROPY: THE JOURNAL OF TRANSHUMANIST THOUGHT
< Transhumanism, futurist philosophy
< Life extension, immortalism, and biostasis
< Smart drugs and other intelligence-intensifying technologies
< Artificial intelligence, personality uploading, and artificial life
< Nanocomputers and molecular nanotechnology
< Memetics (ideas as replicating agents)
< Experimental free communities in space, on the oceans, & in
cyberspace
< Effective thinking, information-filtering, life management
< Self-transformative psychology
< Spontaneous order (free markets, neural networks, evolutionary
processes, genetic algorithms, etc)
< Privacy technologies, electronic markets, digital money
< Critical analysis of environmentalism
< Explorations of the ultimate limits of physics

Since 1988, Extropy has provided a unique forum for intriguing and
inspiring explorations of advanced and future technologies, focusing on
their potential for overcoming present human limits, enabling us to
create a posthuman future. If you're tired of shallow, trendy, or
uncritical thinking on the technological frontier, Extropy will satisfy,
startle, and stimulate you.

"I love it. Extropy excites the hell out of my mind." ZL, 1/93

"It's an absolutely great issue, and in general I would call it the
best periodical I have ever seen in my life." AC, 8/92

"#9 is excellent! Truly outstanding! The best yet! Keep up the good
work." MS, 8/92

Jerod Pore, Factsheet Five #47: "The zine of the ultimate reality
hackers (and far beyond the pretentious incarnation of Mondo 2000)...
An awesome glimpse of a better future."

TO SUBSCRIBE OR BECOME AN ExI MEMBER:

I would like to join the Extropy Institute in creating the future, receiving
Extropy, Exponent, other publications, information on events, and
discounts on books, tapes, and conferences.
Annual rates:
USA: $30 Sustaining Member: $100
Canada/Mexico: $33
Corporate Sustaining
Overseas: $40 Member: $250

You may subtract $5 if you are a full-time student. Extropy subscribers
deduct value ($4.50 each) of remaining issues.

I don't want to join Extropy Institute at this time, but I do want to read
Extropy: The Journal of Transhumanist Thought. Enclosed is $13.50
($15 Canada/Mexico; $22 overseas air) for a three-issue subscription.

Back issues available: 1,2,4,5,6 - $4.00 each; 7,8,9,10 - $4.50 each
Make checks payable to "Extropy Institute," and mail to:

Extropy Institute, 11860 Magnolia Ave., Ste. R, Riverside, CA
92503.

Tel/Fax: 909-688-2323.

E-mail: [email protected]

Foreign orders: Payment must be in US dollars: Cash, traveler's
check, P.O., or check drawn on a US bank.

Your name:
Address:__________________________________________

Max More [email protected]
President
Extropy Institute (ExI)
 
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