True Names1 is really a story about AI, but most people in the bitcoin/cypherpunk space have probably heard about it because of how Vinge describes nyms and the consequences of having your nym2 connected to your legal name. This horrible fate is exactly what happens to Mr Slippery.
They had discovered Mr Slippery's True Name and it was Roger Andrew Pollack TIN/SSAN 0959-34-2861, and no amount of evasion, tricky programming, or robot sources could ever again protect him from them.
Mr Slippery is a hacker and a member of a collective of other hackers called the Warlocks. Hacking in True Names is way cooler than real life because Vinge imagined the internet as an immersive virtual experience more like being in the Matrix than typing on a keyboard. But instead of some slick simulation of the 1990s, Mr Slippery and friends wander around swamps and mountains full of sprites and other virtual monsters and their coven meets in a castle defended by a very robust firewall program called Alan.3 Instead of keying in commands, they speak spells that bend the fabric of cyberspace.4
The dynamics of nyms are front and center. Can you trust your cyber-friends? Probably not. If they discover your true name, they basically own you. Vinge calls it becoming a thrall. It doesn't sound pleasant. The Warlocks are all in an uneasy soft war with each other, cooperating against their enemies,5 but also willing to take a shot at a fellow Warlock should the opportunity arise.
Writing in 1979, Vinge even describes the beginning of the dead internet theory: Mr Slippery is quite sure he won't be fooled if his online friends are replaced by some other entity--or even if they are a program themselves--that little sprite you saw in the meadow could turn out to be a horrific, hardware damaging virus, but Mr Slippery thinks he knows how to tell the difference.
But do you think you could ever be fooled? Frankly, no. If you talk to one of those things long enough, they display a repetitiveness, an inflexibility that's a giveaway.
Enter the Mailman: a mysterious new hacker who never shows himself even in cyberspace. He joins up with the Warlocks and quickly astounds them with his abilities. But pretty soon it starts to seem like the Great Enemy isn't his only target and several members of the Warlocks quickly become his thralls. But the Mailman's aspirations are far greater than defeating a few hackers; he's got his eye on global domination.
Remember how we began with Mr Slippery getting doxxed? It was the Great Enemy that found his true name. And throughout all the ensuing excitement, we are constantly reminded that the government knows where he lives and will kill him if he steps out of line. Messy cyber warfare ensues.
Footnotes
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True Names is expensive on Amazon and other booksellers. And my local libraries didn't have a copy. But I was able to track it down on archive.org where you can borrow a digital copy. ↩
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If you haven't started using a nym yet, you really ought to think about it. ↩
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Yup, another Turing reference. It isn't cyberpunk if it doesn't mention Turing. ↩
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One of the best parts of True Names is how Vinge describes the difference between this fantastical way of interacting with computers almost by analogy and the more logical--and entirely less effective--manner used by the government. When I was younger and full of exciting thoughts, I liked to believe that arguing by analogy was the great alternative to logic (a lot like analog and digital are the two main ways of representing a signal: one is fuzzy and full of gradients while the other is crisp and black and white). It's like using leverage in finance: when you say XX is like YY, it let's you jump past a lot of reasoning and simply see a new understanding--but the implication of just such an analogy is that you can get totally wrecked thinking this way, too. The Warlocks use analogy programming and are very powerful. ↩
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I definitely appreciated how all the hackers call the government 'the Great Enemy.' ↩