Adi Shamir's cryptographic secret shaing scheme

Maybe some people already know about this, but I thought this article about secret sharing was pretty interesting.

Basically, this is a cryptographic way to give out n keys, and then encrypt something so that you only need t of these to read it. (Where t <= n). The best part is that, Shamir's scheme, having t-1 or fewer keys gives no information about the plaintext.

I haven't heard of many practical applications of this-- despite the fact that it seems useful. The cynic in me says that by the time we finally start figuring out good uses for all this stuff, quantum computers will come on to the scene and overturn the apple cart.