add 001-platform-independence and 002-public-keys posts.

soft/001-platform-independence.md

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+# platform independence
+
+one should expect any platform which achieves prominence to eventually be abused
+to the degree the power dynamics inherent to its design allow.  e.g., no
+centralised platform, however well-meaning, can guarantee in perpetuity the
+protection of it's users' data and their social connections from one form of
+exploitation or another.  such exploitation generally takes the form of
+psychological manipulation, transmuting the social capital of the privately
+owned "public square" into other forms of capital and, in some cases, destroying
+the communities who were responsible for the creation of that social capital in
+the first place.  increasingly this exploitation is done without the platform
+owner's knowledge or consent; the simple fact that a lot of unencrypted data has
+been gathered together in one place makes the users of the platform vulnerable.
+(this problem is worsened by a lack of tooling targeting reputation and the
+deduplication of formal arguments, but that is a topic for a much later day.)
+
+the problem with every platform built using the traditional methods of web
+development is that the traditional methods necessarily create an information
+asymmetry that favors the platform providers and those able to compromise
+such platforms.  put another way, using such platforms could be seen as opting
+in to a form of mass surveillance.
+
+in this author's opinion, one cannot be said to be platform independent unless
+one's ability to migrate one's identity and data and keep private communications
+private is _not_ dependent on the goodwill or competence of a platform provider.

soft/001-platform-independence.md.asc

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soft/002-public-keys.md

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+# public keys (and "cypherspace")
+
+a public key is the ultimate platform independent, fully decentralised form of
+identity.  for most there are still trust dependencies involved, of course: one
+must trust the design of the scheme itself, the programmers who implemented it,
+and all those involved in designing and building the hardware it runs on.  as
+suggested in [000-readme.md](./000-readme.md), these dependencies may never be
+done away with entirely in this increasingly complex world.  still, a public key
+is the closest thing to a discrete, physical body that exists in the digital
+world.  all other forms of identity either introduce additional power imbalances
+and trustful dependencies, or else may be easily forged.
+
+keyed entities, signed statements, and encrypted data storage and communications
+together form what may be termed 'cypherspace.'  only entities with
+cryptographically sound ways of proving ownership of identities exist in
+cypherspace.  cypherspace exists primarily on the internet, but it also exists
+offline, in local networks, and even sneakernets.  because it is defined by
+information, it _can_ exist anywhere information may be stored.  because
+information is defined as a change from some initial state, this means it can
+technically exist anywhere mutable (though of course many such places may be of
+no utility).
+
+because information is channel-independent and ubiquitous, cypherspace is nearly
+unstoppable.  the weak points in cypherspace are the gaps in one's understanding
+of the _actual behavior_ of one's tools, a lack of knowledge regarding how to
+_use_ one's tools to engage in cypherspace, and the obvious nature of the most
+common ways of engaging with it across long distances.  (e.g., two devices
+sending apparently random data back and forth across the continent are almost
+certainly engaging in some form of encrypted communication, which may itself
+be enough to make one a target for malicious actors.)

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