Reddit's Satoshi Nakamoto Skeptics
newyorker.com
newyorker.com
We are still learning how to live in a connected and recorded world. Even the most coherent natural conversations, when put on paper, make for strained reading. The thread of thought jerks around implications and exclamations of hyperbole. Cherry-picking hiccups is a thoughtless exercise in missing the forest for the trees.
We lived in a connected world before. Small town talk connected communities. The chatter then was likely as belligerent as Twitter is today. The difference, though, is gossip is (usually) ephemeral while written words persist. Society didn't seek to document and re-broadcast the petty thoughts of suburban Geneva on the loucheness of New Yorkers. If something was to cross the Atlantic, it would have to carry more substance.
Perhaps it will take a new generation of reporters to effect the change. One more enamoured by, and driven to explore, the message versus the medium.
"We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate…. As if the main object were to talk fast and not to talk sensibly. We are eager to tunnel under the Atlantic and bring the Old World some weeks nearer to the New; but perchance the first news that will leak through into the broad, flapping American ear will be that the Princess Adelaide has the whooping cough."
Assuming the Satoshi Nakamoto identified is not the Satoshi Nakamoto who invented bitcoin, you'd think they'd try and get some formal writing with an FOI request or something to solidify the writing analysis instead of relying on postings to model train forums.
That said, it also points out I'm pushing gooter status.
However, as a former reporter, I can understand the temptation of looking at reddit as a treasure trove of quotes and opinions that require no more than a few clicks to use in an article.
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/10/10/111010fa_fact_...
I love how they are trying to play dumb now when they were the ones that originally crossed the lines.
Joshua Davis is incompetent. Maria Bustillos is incompetent too.
It just feels like something that belongs in those trashy grocery store gossip magazines, meanwhile we're the rubberneckers causing some sort of metaphorical traffic jam.
During the early-2000's there was an online location (being deliberately vague here) where there was an individual who was very excited about the idea of decentralised accounting.
At the time most people ignored everything that author was saying. Now, his comments seem strangely prescient.
That authors writing seems somewhat similar to Satoshi's, too.
Additionally at least one domain name that author had control over is a Japanese site (although it looks to be pretty spammy, and not Bitcoin related).
OTOH, there was little evidence that I saw that this person had the necessary skills to create Bitcoin.
I'm not entirely sure that I would/should/could investigate it further anyway. Satoshi seems to value his or her privacy, and even if anyone had information that could piece that shield I'm not sure they should.
But meh.. like you say. I'm probably wrong anyway. OTOH.. how would someone verify something like this? As far as I can see there is no compelling way to do it, without Satoshi deciding to unmask themselves.
I mean, there are a bunch of ideas that half of us have had at one point or another, independently. Decentralized refrigeration boxes for grocery-to-the-home delivery is also one of those ideas, autonomically interacting vehicle computers is another.
News at 11.
The people with the means (NSA, CIA, etc) already know who he is (or can easily find out).