Cryptographic Amnesia ===================== Type: Book Organization: MIT Press Dates: forthcoming Topics: MIT Press, Archival research, Oral history Summary ------- A cultural history of cryptography that follows codes and ciphers from specialized instruments into the infrastructure of everyday communication. Project Notes ------------- Cryptographic Amnesia asks how cryptography acquired so many civilian purposes and meanings during the twentieth century. Encryption came to protect secrets, verify identity and information, secure commerce, resist surveillance, and organize political life. The book follows that change through the people who made, used, regulated, and argued about codes and ciphers. The research draws on archives, public records, and long-form interviews with cryptographers and cypherpunks. Rather than presenting a sequence of technical breakthroughs or another history of war and espionage, it treats cryptography as a social practice and a medium of communication. This makes it possible to ask not only whether a system worked, but who trusted it, what kind of relationship it created, and which forms of power it helped to distribute or conceal. The result is a people's history of cryptography and a usable past for anyone who now depends on encryption without having chosen the terms of that dependence. Forthcoming from MIT Press. Original and Related Work ------------------------- Overview Read the publication synopsis, status, and bibliographic record for the forthcoming book. https://charlesberret.net/writing/#writing-cryptographic-amnesia Drawbridge Model preprint Read a related preprint on how cryptographic tools move between civilian and military uses. https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/nmbwj Dissertation excerpts Open selected dissertation chapters that form part of the book's archival research foundation. https://charlesberret.net/shared/2018-berret-diss-final-excerpts.pdf Canonical page: https://charlesberret.net/projects/#cryptographic-amnesia Plaintext: https://charlesberret.net/projects/cryptographic-amnesia.txt