Cryptography is everywhere. The secure sending of information is what has made the Internet and the Web what it is today. Without the cryptography and encryption, the securing of information, the Internet just wouldn't work as we'd like it to, it just wouldn't be convienient. There would be no payments, no Internet banking, no sharing of personal information, no real means of keeping information safe. In short, there would be no real use for the Internet without cryptography.
At one time, encryption and cryptography was the realm of spooks, spies and the military. Today, we all use it without even knowing it. To keep us and our information safe the use of it is increasing daily, and that is a good thing. Each time we go to a web page, or access a service on our smart phones, we are almost always using some form of encryption. Messenging apps, such as Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Telegram and Signal all use it. It keeps our messages known only to those with whom we want to communicate.
There has always been a lot of handwringing about encryption. Bad people, who have something to hide, use encryption. Politicians, in their usual hysterical manner, are demanding that the rise in the use of encryption is a bad thing and we need to think about "responsible encryption". This is nothing new, governments across the globe are worried that their expensive censorship and monitoring programs are being made useless due to improved usage of encryption. The argument goes, in summary, that the makers of encryptions (mathematicians, boffins and nerds) should look to introduce a secret back-door, so that legitimate authorities (like governments) can access the information if they so wish. This argument bring head shaking and eye-rolling amongst the cryptographic community. Governments have such a great track record of keeping things secret and only using things for good, right? Err, well no.
The real problem is that most people know nothing about cryptography. The majority of the world's trade depends on it, the Internet depends on it and we all use the Internet today, even if we think we don't. One could argue that cryptography is the twenty-first century equivalent of electricity - it really that important! Most of us know what electricity is and how important it is, very few know much about cryptography. Many don't know anything at all.
Cryptographon is aimed at helping people better understand what cryptography is, how it is used and how important it is that politicians and governments do not ruin the key mechanism that controls the means to keep us safe in the modern world and allows us to express ourselves as we see fit. If any one thing that has supported freedom in human history more than anything, it is cryptography - the means of sending and receiving secret codes.
The usage of Internet today is incredibly inefficient, insecure and liable to censorship. Not only that it is highly centralised, with most of the information the Web has today is owned by a handful of companies. In most cases that information was created by you, but in putting on the Web you gave away your rights to ownership. Instead, it is owned by Facebook, Google, Wordpress or wherever you uploaded it. In some cases these "guardians" of the Web are sloppy and if your information is sensitive or of value, they leak it out to crooks who steal your identity or financial details. But luckily for us, the current usage is highly inefficient - it costs too much money to sustain in its current form. This inefficiency is leading to significant change. Not the tweaks of making something a bit more efficient or cheaper, but from the roots up the Web is going to be transformed.
At the centre of this impending revolution is de-centralization. The Web will be no longer a client and a server. The data will be everywhere. Many will be familiar with BitTorrent, others with Bitcoin, these are the progenitors of Web 3.0. At the core of how these technologies work is cryptography. While the current Web has had to bolt on cryptographic protection to safguard its usage and its users, these new technologies only work because of cryptography.
It's ashame there is the term is Web 3.0. It's really Web 2.0. The term Web 2.0 was stolen by a movement that made the Web at the turn of the century dynamic and on-demand. It was really Web 1.2, a renovation with a new porch out front. Web 3.0 is a brand new green field build, with a connected double garage and a pool out back.