CYPHERPUNKS WRITE CODE.
Eric Hughes’ 1993 Cypherpunk Manifesto argued for privacy through code.
A manifesto is passed towards you while a programmer keeps typing. One person shares the argument; another builds the tools. The scene imagines the practical spirit of the cypherpunks: privacy needs people willing to make it work.
On 9 March 1993, Eric Hughes set out that argument in A Cypherpunk's Manifesto. Privacy, he wrote, was different from secrecy. Keeping something private did not mean hiding everything from everyone. It meant having a choice about what to reveal, to whom, and when. An open electronic society needed room for that choice.
The manifesto connected this principle to everyday dealings. A transaction need not reveal every personal detail about the people involved. Cryptography, digital signatures and anonymous systems could help limit what others learned. Hughes called for people to build and share the software themselves. The card's phrase, CYPHERPUNKS WRITE CODE., captures that shift from an argument to an action.
In HISTROVE's imagined den, the screens light the work in progress. The paper reaches beyond the room, inviting the next person to take part. On the left, an envelope marked Blind Signatures, 1982 links this moment back to card 001. Chaum's earlier work and Hughes's manifesto are different contributions to the same question: how can people participate in electronic life without giving away more than they choose?
Sources & the artist’s interpretation
Eric Hughes, A Cypherpunk's Manifesto , 9 March 1993. The den, people and paper handoff are an imagined scene, not a documented meeting or reconstruction of Hughes's workspace. Fine illustration lettering is approximate. The full original text is available through the card's QR link.
