Now that I've tricked you into thinking that you need to know about cryptography, why don't we take a coffee break. What's that? You think I'm making this up? What do you mean I'm just trying to waste time? Fine, then. No coffee for you.

Cryptography is the science of encoding information into a form that can only be read once it is decoded. The process of decoding is intended to be unpredictable and difficult for anyone without explicit knowledge of how the message was encoded.

Cryptography as a word has as great a history as the concept itself. Originally the word comes from Greek, "Kryptos," (to hide) and later from New Latin (which isn't new enough to still be around), cryptographia, from crypt- + -graphia -graphy. Trust me. Chris said it was true.

From Kryptos, we (we being the English language incarnate) copied part of the word (so as not to steal) and added on the cool little prefix "En" and the suffix "ion" to come up with the word that we now use: encryption. (My explanation, while a bit skewed, probably just saved you several thousand years of linguistic development. You should thank me.)

Unless you want to talk to someone from ancient Rome, however, the previous paragraph is largely irrelevant. Most of you can probably afford to forget it. The important part is that encryption is the act of encoding messages within writing, and cryptography is the study of hidden messages.

Everyone has probably engaged, at one time or another, in the transfer of a hidden message. Remember when you tormented your younger sibling or extended family member by refusing to speak in anything other than pig latin? Have you ever written someone a hidden message with lemon juice so that they could heat it and read what you wrote at a later time?

Both of those actions can be considered uses of encryption. Pig latin and the lemon juice were both used as tools of encryption - ciphers. These ciphers are the mechanisms used to encode a message.

More common and more useful, today, are ciphers that are implemented through computers. Through complex mathematical calculations, computers can encode messages that can only be decoded through the reverse process. By not telling anyone else what that process is, messages can easily be disguised.

Encryption has existed for thousands of years, but only now has it reached a point where it is accessible for the common computer user. Technological advances have made mathematical equations largely irrelevant to the user. Today all that anyone needs to know is how to use a computer program.

Numerous simple examples of encryption exist. In order to start off with an explanation that makes sense, I've written a description of how I encoded the message used in the opening animation.