You said: "I think it has to be a part of a large _service_."
My question was about the size of the _network_.
In any event, following your line of thought, do you think it's possible to have a many _small_, separate networks that were somehow part of a large service?
Regardless of your answer, does our solution have to be a "service"?
What if it is a "product" that creates small networks as overlays on a larger, existing network such as the one all your friends are connected to: the internet?
You said: "I can see that it's possible to create a service around, say, PGP..."
What if you could see that it's possible to create a service (or product, or both) around, say, a scheme that involved only a single shared password and a single shared encryption key? That is, each friend has to remember only two strings for each network to which she belongs, sort of like, say, a username and password.
What if you could see that such a scheme might not require logging on and logging out as frequently as a web-based service such as Facebook?
Would that change your thoughts at all?
You said, when referring to a PKI scheme like PGP: "But I think that [the] level of conceptual overhead is more than lay-people are willing to deal with."
I once thought the same thing about Amazon's S3 service. When I saw the Dropbox product, my thoughts changed.
My question was about the size of the _network_.
In any event, following your line of thought, do you think it's possible to have a many _small_, separate networks that were somehow part of a large service?
Regardless of your answer, does our solution have to be a "service"?
What if it is a "product" that creates small networks as overlays on a larger, existing network such as the one all your friends are connected to: the internet?
You said: "I can see that it's possible to create a service around, say, PGP..."
What if you could see that it's possible to create a service (or product, or both) around, say, a scheme that involved only a single shared password and a single shared encryption key? That is, each friend has to remember only two strings for each network to which she belongs, sort of like, say, a username and password.
What if you could see that such a scheme might not require logging on and logging out as frequently as a web-based service such as Facebook?
Would that change your thoughts at all?
You said, when referring to a PKI scheme like PGP: "But I think that [the] level of conceptual overhead is more than lay-people are willing to deal with."
I once thought the same thing about Amazon's S3 service. When I saw the Dropbox product, my thoughts changed.