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Dollar-Denominated Digital Cash

To follow on from the success of the valueless “Cyberbucks” ecash trial, DigiCash B.V. have now expanded their beta-test to include dollar-denominated ecash. Now, instead of using ‘play money’, it is possible to open an account at Mark Twain Bank in Missouri and conduct real transactions over the Net, paying with anonymous digital cash.

Mark Twain already provide traditional customers with accounts in multiple currencies, so ecash is merely treated as another currency. Users maintain both a dollar account and an ecash account at the bank, and for a small fee can transfer money between the two. Digital cash can then be withdrawn and deposited over the Net from the ecash account, and spent or accepted with software similar to that used in the Cyberbucks trial[1].

Ecash users have a choice of fees for their accounts, depending on the intended level of use. At the low end, the cheapest user account charges an $11 setup fee and $5 per month, and may convert $11 per month to and from ecash for free, after which a 5% conversion fee is charged. At the high end, a high-use merchant account charges a $300 setup fee and $5 per month but only a 2% fee on all conversions. In general, paying a higher setup fee reduces the monthly and conversion fees, and increases the amount that users may convert for free each month before the conversion fee is charged.

The advantage of this system over other Net payment schemes is that it provides cryptographic security and true payer anonymity[2]. However, at this point in time it is still regarded as a beta test, and hence Mark Twain Bank take no responsibility for losses incurred in ecash transactions. From my experience of the Cyberbucks trial, the software is very robust, however cautious users will only withdraw as much ecash as they need, and convert ecash payments back into FDIC-insured dollars as soon as possible.

Any ecash user can set up a shop, and at the time of writing there are nineteen publicised ecash-accepting shops on the Web. The products and services for sale range from software to auto ads, but perhaps of particular interest to Extropians is the pending acceptance of ecash by Laissez Faire Books. The process of creating an ecash-accepting shop is non-trivial, though simply charging for accesses to Web pages requires only limited knowledge of Perl.

Extropian and cypherpunk Sameer Parekh, President of the Community ConneXion ISP in Berkeley, has simplified this by integrating ecash into the www.c2.org Web server. Users can either run a script to set up shops automatically, or simply add a special tag to their HTML access-control files, telling the server to request payment before sending the page to the browser. As c2.org now allows users to pay usage fees with ecash, users without ecash accounts can still set up chargeable Web pages in this fashion and have the charges deducted from their usage fees.

This new trial is another step forward for those interested in privacy and anonymity on the Net. I wish it well.

[1] See Wired, December 1994

[2] See “Protecting Privacy With Electronic Cash”, Extropy #10, “Introduction To Digital Cash”, Extropy #15

Mark Grant Mark.Grant@isltd.insignia.com

Advances features short summaries of advances in science and technology. Our focus is on developments that further our extropic goals of extended life, intensified intelligence, increased freedom, and other ways of overcoming human limits.

Advances also presents economic information, especially as it relates to standards of living and investment opportunities in technological companies. —MM

Direct information for this section to Sean Morgan, Advances Editor: sean@lucifer.com or extropy@extropy.org or send to Extropy, Advances, 13428 Maxella Avenue, #273, Marina Del Rey, CA 90292. This issue’s Advances edited by Eric Watt Forste with Max More.

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BIOTECH/HEALTH

A large step has been taken towards preventing breast cancer. A British-American team has identified a second gene that causes the disorder. The two genes now isolated account for 90% of the inherited cases of breast cancer (18,000 per year in the USA). Women inheriting the BRCA2 gene have an 85% chance of developing the disease. Carriers of the gene also have increased rates of prostate cancer, male breast cancer, and ocular melanoma.

This discovery will allow better screening of susceptible families. The number of lives that could eventually be saved is huge: Breast cancer strikes 182,000 women and 1,000 men each year, killing 46,000 women and 300 men. The first gene identified, BRCA1, was found on chromosome 17. BRCA2 is on chromosome 13. [MM]

Leptin for fat loss: Biotech company Amgen’s stock last July gained $900 million in value after announcing the discovery of a protein called leptin. Leptin, when injected into obese mice, reduced their bodyfat. Leptin is produced by the recently uncovered OB gene.

Amgen’s thunder appears to have been stolen on December 28 by an announcement from Millennium Pharmaceuticals that it had found the receptor for leptin. This may allow Millennium to create a pill capable of altering the gene’s function to induce fat loss, while Amgen is still testing an injectable. Millennium CEO, Mark Levin, suggests that most human obesity may stem not from an inadequate amount of leptin but from the brain’s resistance to it. Millennium thinks that the receptor it has found will lead to the discovery of another obe-

sity gene—the one that determines how well the brain recognizes leptin’s anti-eating signal.

Aging: Laura Chang and a team of four others at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York have cloned a human protective telomeric protein (called hTRF or human telomeric repeat binding factor) and demonstrated that the cloned protein localized in vivo to the chromosome ends. The positive identification and cloning of this protein may lead to a better understanding of telomeric mechanisms, which have been implicated in some aspects of the aging process, including cancer. (Science, 1995 December 8)

COMMUNICATIONS

You may have seen the ads for software allowing you to make long distance calls at local prices via the Internet. Products include Internet Phone from VocalTech, Webtalk from Quarterdeck, Intercom from Telescape Communications, and Webphone from Internet Telephone. How well do they work? Long distance carriers needn’t sweat too much just yet, though the future prospects are intriguing. To make these programs work you’ll need a sound card and microphone and a SLIP/PPP connection to the Internet. The person you’re talking to will need the same software (from the same company). It really works, but sound quality falls below what we’re used to on the phone. The two speakers will have to take turns talking, some parts of your words will drop out, it may take a few seconds for your voice to travel over the Net. To keep up with developments in this area, join the Voice on the Net E-mail

list: Send: “subscribe von-digest” to:

majordomo@pulver.com

Call 1-800-WILD-FIRE (in the U.S.) for a demo of their speech recognition product. An intriguing foreshowing of coming semi-smart digital assistants.

NEURO-COMPUTER INTERFACE

(See also the report on neuroscience research at USC in Extropy #16.)

Nerve cell meets microelectronics: Realizing a tantalizing science fiction fantasy, Richard S. Potember, a chemist at John Hopkins University in Baltimore, and his colleagues are building a chemical bridge between live nerve cells and microelectronics.

Using methods adapted from semiconductor manufacture, the researchers painted textured glass or silicon plates with a synthetic peptide that spurs the growth of fetal neurons. They find that the patterned peptide beds are cozy enough to coax baby rat neurons into sprouting dendrites and axons.

“They’re growing,” Potember says. “With this peptide on the glass, the fetal cells attach to the plate and mature into viable neurons, forming dendritic and axonal connections the way they normally do inside the body.”

The biologically active surface constrains and directs neuronal growth into predetermined, circuitlike patterns. Guiding that growth, the researchers can get the nerve cells to mimic the logical circuits typically carved into semiconductors.

Following chip design rules for storing and processing data, the team aims to forge “live circuits” that could eventually respond to direct, computer-modulated stimulation.

“The interface between biology and electronics is important for biomedicine,” Potember says. In the short run, this method shows promise for testing pharmaceuticals and possibly for studying neurological diseases, he says.

In the long run, the team wants to use the new technology in prosthetic devices. “This could be very helpful to someone who’s lost an arm or leg,” Potember says.

COMPUTERS

The Web spreads: Revenue from World Wide Web software was barely anything in 1994. Last year it was around $250 million. Hambrecht & Quist Inc. forecast revenue of $600 million this year. Even so, Web software will account for less than 1% of the $100 billion worldwide software market. 75% of this software is made in the USA. Thanks partly to the Web, sales of object-oriented software has started growing fast. According to IDC, $600 million dollars of object-oriented software will be sold in 1996, double the ‘95 figure. [MM]

Computer sales still booming: 35% more servers will be shipped this year—up to 1.05 million. PC sales will grow 16% from last year to 25.6 million in the USA (from 10 million 5 years ago), and up by 19% to 68.7 million worldwide, according to Dataquest. The Semiconductor Industry Association reckons on a 26% growth in chip production this year. The microchip industry is set to ex-

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pand over the next decade or two even faster than the average annual 15% gains since the first microchip was put out by Texas Instruments 36 years ago. Don’t begrudge Intel and other manufacturers their healthy profits: New wafer fabrication plants now cost around $1.3 billion each. New plants will have to be constructed every week to reach the third of a trillion dollar level by 2000 as forecast by Dataquest, Inc. [MM]

A Business Week (4/29/96) story describes the quest for ever more powerful supercomputers, the current record holder being a 281 gigaflops machine built by an Intel-Sandia team. By November Sandia labs will install a new Intel machine, a $46 million computer “capable of cracking the long-time fantasy speed of 1 teraflops. That’s computer speak for a trillion calculations per second.” That machine may actually manage 1.8 teraflops.

The Energy department is speeding up existing commercial pressures with almost a billion (US) dollar program The Accelerated Strategic Computing Initiative, or ASCI. Of course they have to call it “strategic” to justify spending a billion bucks extracted by coercion, rather than letting industry do the same job over a couple of extra years.

By early 2001, a 10-teraflops machine is expected, and by 2002 or 2003 a 100-teraflops machine. A 500-teraflops computer by 2005 may be possible, if funding continues. These speeds will not suffice for a number of scientific (and even industrial and entertainment) purposes. According to Business Week, no one has an idea how to manage even a one petaflop (10¹⁵) machines yet, though need is seen for computers running in the exaflops (10¹⁸). For instance, it’s reckoned that to reliably test nuclear weapons purely through simulations, at least 100 teraflops will be needed.

See the box on the next page for the National Science Foundation’s wishlist.

INTERNET

Backlinks

An overview of this topic is available at: http://www.hss.caltech.edu/~hanson/backlinks.html

The following is taken from John Walker’s formal design document at http://

SEXUAL FUNCTION

A new treatment for male impotence (erectile dysfunction) offers exciting hope for millions of men suffering from the inability to achieve and/or sustain an erection. Previous treatments for this common disorder have involved injecting vasodilators directly into the shaft of the penis. Although effective, such treatments have not enjoyed enthusiastic acceptance by those suffering from the disorder. Among those who have tried “direct injection”, the attrition rate is very high (>75% within one year). Now there is a compound which can be injected subcutaneously into the arm or thigh. The resulting erection appears about one hour after injection and lasts until orgasm or until the drug is cleared from the blood by the kidney.

The new technology, a peptide called “Rectide”, was discovered accidentally at the University of Arizona, in Tucson. Some 15 years ago, researchers there (including Extropian Dr. Christopher B. Heward) had invented an analog of a peptide hormone known as Melanocyte Stimulating Hormone (MSH). This new analog was found to be a potent stimulator of melanogenesis and, because of its potential use as an artificial skin tanning agent, it was dubbed “Melano-tan”. Initially, excitement about the profit potential of a line of new tanning products containing “melano-tan” was high. Unfortunately, it turned out that “Melano-tan” was only effective when injected and there was far less enthusiasm about the marketability of a tanning agent requiring injection.

The ideal product would be a molecule which could be delivered transdermally (i.e. through the skin). The current market for suntan lotions and creams support a multi-billion dollar industry and it was estimated that, a transdermally deliverable version of “Melano-tan” would be worth in excess of $250 million in annual sales. Thus, the molecule was patented and work began to perfect the technology for delivery through the skin.

In the years to follow, many creative approaches were tried, but one of the most promising was that of designing new, more lipophilic (fat soluble) molecules which, while retaining full biological activity at the MSH receptor, could be delivered by rubbing them on the skin. In the mean time, in order to promote the existing tanning technology, Mac E. Hadley, chief investigator on the project, began regularly self-injecting the original molecule to develop and maintain his own beautiful tan.

After years of effort and many failed attempts, the scientists finally came up with a very lipophilic analog which retained full biological activity. After thorough testing on all of the relevant bioassays, Dr. Hadley decided to see if it would maintain his tan. When he injected this new molecule into his arm, he got an erection which lasted for almost 8 hours. Although shocked, at first, by this unexpected effect, Dr. Hadley, a true scientist, was undaunted. He continued to experiment until he found a dose which would give him an erection of more normal duration. This new molecule was the first and only peptide known to cause penile erection, so Dr. Hadley called it “Rectide.”

It has been estimated that as many as 20 million American men suffer from some form of impotence. Fully 50% of these problems are thought to be of psychogenic origin, but, until now, differential diagnosis has been both inconvenient and expensive. “Rectide” shows great promise as a diagnostic tool for distinguishing between the two major types of impotence psychogenic (idiopathic) and physiological (organic). In addition to is role as diagnostic tool, “Rectide” may also be useful as a drug for treatment of idiopathic impotence. Preliminary results from early clinical trials are very exciting.

[Dr. Christopher Heward]

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www.fourmilab.ch/documents/hacklinks.html

One essential part of Ted Nelson’s original concept of Xanadu was that links between documents be bi-directional—

as a set of C programs which are installed on a server which wishes to provide back links to its users and executed via the Common Gateway Interface (CGI) mechanism. These pro-

ultimately the decision of the writer. The concept, however, should not be discarded…

In that vein, I’m working on an HTML Stretch Text implementation. The “verbosity con-

trol” is really just a link to another copy of the same document where I have added the detail. (No fancy com-

Problems	Speeds used for recent calcs	Needed by 2000	Long-range needs
Computational cosmology	30 gigaflops	200 gigaflops	10 exaflops
Interactions between atoms	300 gigaflops	30 teraflops	Under study
Molecular dynamics in biology	30 gigaflops	3 teraflops	20 petaflops
Quantum chromodynamics	30 gigaflops	7 teraflops	100 exaflops

when a link was made to a document, the linked-to text would become a link back to the document that referenced it. This was believed to be an essential component of an open hypertext system intended for discussion of complex issues, and a great improvement over current forms of scholarly publication.

With the advent of the World-Wide Web, links have come into the mainstream of writing and publishing, but these links are unidirectional—there’s no way to know if a link has been made to your document, and no way to attach comments of your own to documents you read on the Web. In the Web, as it exists today, we have forward links but no back links.

Hack Links is a crude mechanism that provides a limited back link capability for Web documents. Despite its many shortcomings, it may prove useful to demonstrate the utility of back links and obtain practical experience in their use which can guide the evolution of a more practical and comprehensive facility for eventual inclusion in the HTML standard with Web client and server support.

Hack Links is implemented

grams maintain a database of extant back links in a file external to a document and permit retrieval of a documents containing back links, addition of new back links, and following links when a given piece of text contains multiple overlapping links. The individual programs are described below.

Stretch text

The following is taken from: http://fire.clarkson.edu/deuelpm/Stretch/Intro.html

Stretch Text is a concept that Ted Nelson conceived and wrote about in Computer Lib/Dream Machines (Nelson, 1975). Nelson’s vision of stretch text, inspired by Vannevar Bush, envisioned a mainframe computer programmed to enrich the information of the electronic text.

Stretch text can be defined as a kind of hypertext that gives a reader an “idiot knob” for their reading material. In other words, a knowledgeable reader can set his or her browser to Terse to get just the essential information or “turn it up” toward Verbose to get more detail.

I believe (given the current technology) that the addition or removal of information for a select target audience is

puter science going on here!)

Number of people over 16 in US and Canada with access to the Internet: 37 million

Estimated percentage of adults in the U.S. using the World-Wide Web: 7.7

Number of Internet Service Providers, worldwide (July, 1996): 3,054

As of April, 1996, number of domains in .COM: 316,271

Number of Internet hosts, as of January, 1996: 9.5 million

Number of web servers counted in the June Netcraft Web Server Survey: 252,685

The Internet Index Inspired by “Harper’s Index”* Compiled by Win Treese (treese@OpenMarket.com)

NANOTECH

Advances toward molecular nanotechnology: scanned probe microscopy. SPM can be used not only for observing atomic scale structure but also for manipulating material with atomic precision. Snow and Campbell have integrated fabrication and measurement into a single process step; this sort of integration is essential for scaling up performance. Using a direct oxidation technique, they have obtained typical

linewidths (of oxidized substrate) of 10 to 20 nanometers; lines at this width can be written at up to 10,000 nanometers per second. The method operates at low voltage. Simultaneous measurement and fabrication by the SPM tip allows control in the sub-10-nanometer regime. (Science, 1995 December 8) http://s1.GANet.NET/~wm0/mtest0.htm

SPACE & ROCKETS

William Mook has assembled a compendium of preliminary engineering studies for low-cost space missions together with historical and current engineering documents on abandoned (primarily for political reasons) atomic-thrust rockets.

Lockheed-Martin “Venture Star” Wins X-33 Downselect On July 2nd, 1996, at Caltech’s Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena California, Vice President Al Gore and NASA Administrator Dan Goldin together lifted the concealing cover from a scale model of the winner of the X-33 experimental reusable rocket demonstrator competition, revealing Lockheed-Martin’s “Venture Star” triangular lifting body as NASA’s choice for the billion-dollar three-year cooperative project.

What Are The Specs?

Lockheed-Martin’s X-33 design will lift off vertically, at a fully-fuelled weight of 273,000 lbs, powered by two sets of Rocketdyne J-2S turbomachinery (the J-2S was an upgraded version of the Saturn 5’s J-2 upper-stage engine) feeding liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen to two banks of small thrust chambers in a “linear aero-spike” arrangement on either side of the ship’s

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blunt wedge-shaped trailing edge, producing a total of just over 400,000 lbs of thrust at takeoff.

Steering while under rocket power will be totally by differential throttling of the four banks of thrust chambers, side-to-side, and top-row-to-bottom-row. Steering during gliding flight before runway landing will be by a variety of aerodynamic control surfaces.

The triangular experimental flight vehicle will be 67 feet from nose to tail, 68 feet wide including the upward-slanted fins on the aft corners, and will weigh 63,000 lbs with empty propellant tanks. Thermal protection will be by new advanced metallic TPS plates backed by insulation over the composite plastic vehicle outer shell. The vehicle’s broad curved underside (it reenters pretty much belly-first) spreads reentry heat loads out over a wide area, reducing maximum temperatures and allowing the use of metallic rather than tile TPS.

The tradeoff for this is low hypersonic Lift-to-Drag ratio (L:D) which means low reentry maneuverability, low “cross-range”. A reasonable tradeoff for a precursor to a routine cargo-hauler… Maximum X-33 speed is described as mach 15+, roughly 60% of orbital velocity. The vehicle will be returned to base after flights on the back of a NASA Shuttle Carrier 747.

X-33 is scheduled for first flight less than three years from now, in March 1999.

Space Access Update #67 7/11/96, Copyright 1996 by Space Access Society. Reprinted with permission. hvanderbilt@BIX.com Space Access Society: 4855 E Warner Rd #24-150, Phoenix AZ 85044

ECONOMICS

How fast can we grow? Faster economic growth means faster growth in personal wealth, increased funding of research, and a quicker approach to the affordability of large scale projects such as space colonization. It’s frustrating then that policy-makers and some economists insist that the economy cannot grow faster than 2.5% annually, in the long run, without boosting inflation.

When Keynesian economists (the followers of influential British economist John Maynard Keynes) used to have practically the sole voice in the postwar period, growth was in. According to Keynesian theory, economic growth could be raised either by tax cuts or by increased government spending. They preferred the latter both because their theory said it had a larger “multiplier” effect than the former, and because of their personal and political incentives to favor bigger government.

While the Ford Administration sought growth of almost 6% between 1976 and 1980, the Carter Administration sought 4.7% annual growth for 1979-83, and the Reagan Administration looked for 3.8%, we are now told not to seek more than 2.5%. Why the change of tune?

This reversal, argues supply-side economist Paul Craig Roberts (see Business Week, 1/8/96), is due to the dethronement of Keynesian economics. The supply-siders see the recipe for economic growth not in government spending (demand-side), but in improving incentives for work and investment. Higher taxes actually act as a drag on growth. As Roberts says, “Liberal economists

have responded not by resurrecting Keynesian demand management—an impossible task—but by de-emphasizing growth.”

The “liberal” economists claim that the economy cannot sustain growth greater than 2.5% annually (growth averaged 3.7% between 1982 and 1989), so economics instead must deal with the “fairness” of distribution.

If the supply-siders are right, the Keynesians and advocates of government growth are unnecessarily stifling healthy growth. If policy-makers focused on freeing up the economy through deregulation, lower taxes, and simplification of bureaucracy, growth could accelerate to 5%, 6%, or higher. Parts of China have been growing near to 10%. Isn’t it about time we joined them? [MM]

Resources keep expanding: More signs that the cornucopians are closer to the truth than the doomsayers: The average cost of replacing reserves of oil and gas keeps falling. Between 1991 and the present, costs of replacing reserves has fallen from $5.90 per barrel to $4.50. (Arthur Anderson & Co.) Better technology driven by competition is to thank. Using technologies like three-dimensional seismic imaging, companies are improving the rates by which they strike oil or gas by a third. A 7% rise in crude oil production is expected next year. Texaco forecasts a 40% rise in production over the next five years. (Business Week) [MM]

From next issue Advances will be edited by Sean Morgan. Sean produces Breakthrough!, an online technological advances newsletter. You can subscribe to Breakthrough! by sending “subscribe breakthrough” in the body of a message to majordomo@lucifer.com Back issues are available at: http://www.lucifer.com/~sean/BT/

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