I'm reading a history of asymmetric cryptography right now ("Crypto" by Steven Levy), and my mind is being repeatedly blown by the origins, odds, and success of the movement. Everything we're doing with nostr started in the 1970's! And yet we somehow still don't have widely-used, decentralized electronic mail that checks both boxes of the original RSA paper:
> we must ensure that two important properties of the current “paper mail” system are preserved: (a) messages are private, and (b) messages can be signed.
The question that keeps coming to mind is this: what happened between 1996 and 2009? Once individual rights to cryptography was established, did the movement die out? Why did no one build out access to cryptography for the average internet user? Yes, SSL is ubiquitous, but it's still controlled by a cabal of root certificate issuers.
I know there was ongoing work that led to bitcoin, and XMPP is an obvious exception, but even so I am stunned that 50 years after the invention of public key cryptography we still don't have widespread, meaningful adoption. Keys are limited to technical users, and encryption is mediated and undermined by centralized platforms.
For those with some perspective on this history: are we in the midst of a cryptography renaissance? Did bitcoin kick off a resurgence of interest in digital privacy? Or is that just my own bias at play?
