If you're unfamiliar, there was a strong meme in the late eighties through early/mid nineties among a certain set that the perfect storm of public key encryption (still wonderfully unbounded in our minds) and the emerging global network would be a nexus point for personal power in privacy, anonymity and security and in many real ways break down the bonds of the states. It's worth noting that this was about the time that the soviet union fell, and many in the know had gotten a first taste of global presence by hearing about the people in the streets via usenet before it made the news.
It wasn't that I was particularly a hard core believer or activist, at least compared to many I knew. But for those who understood what an immense impact the internet was going to have it seemed to everyone I knew - NSA, hackers, professors, that it was just how it would be. You couldn't hope to spy on pretty much anyone anymore when you could use perfect encryption to scramble a telephone call or an email. Kind of like when you knew everyone was about to have a touch phone.
I was ideologically aligned and mixed in such circles, nerds were still outcasts so not really too big a world, but my life was busy with other things - but I watched from a distance, fascinated with all the ideas and things to come. I'm not sure I've every really been more sure something was going to happen, at least to a very significant degree.
The government was sure too - that was when they came up with CALEA and people got upset but mostly scoffed - there was a real sense that they were just in their death throws.
Things got pretty busy, Internet boom. Company got bought by an agency, every big name anybody needed to be on the Internet yesterday. Was a blast though a bit of a blur - ended up in SF as the whole thing worked itself into a nasty hangover. Can't remember worrying too much about when the cypherpunks were going to win but still knew it had to be coming, err well it's just about adoption.
It really sucks to wake up after a bender and realize that you helped kill the dream that you were just waiting for someone else to make happen.
Working infosec as california recovered put me face to face with reality pretty early in this cycle. Not only was the thing I was so sure of totally not how it went down, with shift from relatively petty financial fraud and wankers to states and srs.bsns abandoning defense to focus solely of offense it's been very hard to square. It's hard to believe many people ever feel so sure about something that turns out so absolutely opposite.
Fuck, at least nobody killed rms.