Only Satoshi can tell what kind of influence it was, do you have any quotes? If you compare technical details of those two systems then it's like computer vs
abacusYou should actually read Satoshi's paper before getting involved in such arguments. Adam's work is cited directly:
To implement a distributed timestamp server on a peer-to-peer basis, we will need to use a proofof-work system similar to Adam Back's Hashcash [6], rather than newspaper or Usenet posts.
See section 4.
And yes, discussions about p2p mixing are quite old, that thread I'm quoted in is from July 2012.
I'm not sure Gavin is correct when he says ordinary people don't care about privacy. They care very much, hence the proliferation of scare stories in the media, the success of Facebook over MySpace, etc. That doesn't mean people will go to any lengths to get it from any and all parties though. Not all privacy adversaries are created equal.