Cryptography Reference
In-Depth Information
systems of the time before it could transform them. Electrical light had to
find representational terms that could be comprehended before it could
create its own new world of experience and meaning.”
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By embracing
embodiment and institutions, cryptographers gain access to multiple reg-
isters of such “representational terms.” Rather than being stuck with the
limited rhetorical range afforded by technological determinism, cryptog-
raphers would enjoy a much broader range of narratives, arguments, and
practical experiences from which to articulate the new configurations of
privacy, anonymity, proof, and accountability that cryptographic protocols
make possible.
These benefits will come at certain costs. Insofar as they are based on
assumptions that can only be verified empirically, the proofs flowing from
this extended model provide for a different kind of mathematical certainty
than those based on number theory. Yet this is nothing particularly new.
As Reuben Hersh has suggested, “our inherited notion of 'rigorous proof'
is not carved in marble. People will modify that notion, will allow machine
computation, numerical evidence, probabilistic algorithms, if they find it
advantageous to do so.”
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Indeed, from interactive proof systems to DNA
computation and probabilistic algorithms, cryptography itself has power-
fully motivated researchers to push the boundaries of what counts as
mathematical proof.
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The controversies surrounding the ROM and physical security frame-
work demonstrate that the models that inform cryptographic theory do
evolve and adapt—indeed, even coexist. Sandra Mitchell, a philosopher of
science, has proposed scientists embrace multiple explanatory models as a
form of
pluralism
that “recognizes the diversity of causal structures that
populate our world.” The choice between coarse- and fine-grained abstrac-
tions need not be fought on theoretical grounds, as “they are both 'true'
and 'accurate' ways to capture features of the world we want to represent.
This is the crucial point: what determines the level of abstraction or granu-
larity is pragmatic and
can be answered only with reference to the particular
context and scientific objective.
Different representations will be better for
solving different problems.”
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This chapter presented a series of arguments suggesting that working
from a plurality of models would in fact allow for a different engagement
with the material world and perhaps for renewed creativity and greater
social relevance. Such an engagement will also require the reimagination
