Identity Woman » Interesting

Tagging using XRI

iwoman — Tue, 02 Aug 2005 14:17:54 +0000

Drummond just posted a fantastic articulation how on might use XRI to do open tagging. Some of you may not be following the emergence of Tagging in the blogoshpere but it is really real with many services now empowering their members to tag. It has exploded so much that they have begun he World’s First Social Social Tagging Site Tagging Site site Supercilious. Tag Tuesday is the real hub of this emerging developer/social media creator community. Perhaps Drummond has just created the outlines for a presentation there I know Nile was asking for suggestions about who could present the next month so let them know when you will be in town D.

Jerry’s experiment tomorrow

iwoman — Mon, 01 Aug 2005 04:37:09 +0000

Jerry Michalskiis going to be doing an experiment tomorrow – Monday night at the Hillside club.

At this Fireside Meeting, Jerry will blend a performance piece that involves the audience and a piece of concept-mapping software called TheBrain with a thesis he’s developing that will either have you grinning enthusiastically or throwing spoiled vegetables. It’s an experiment, and whoever shows up will help shape it.

This is an interesting fact I didn’t know Marc Finnern posted on the Future Salon.

At AlwaysOn a week ago I talked to Doc Searls and he told me that the original idea for the Cluetrain Manifesto was born 10 years ago at one of Jerry’s retreats. There are many events in the Bay Area, but this one you shouldn’t miss.

As a forward looking thinker Jerry has a lot of good things to say about identity and we often chat about the field. I am looking forward to going to the next (my first) “Jerry’s retreat.” Hopefully he can come to the Identity Event in Berkeley in October details to follow this week.

Revolutionizing Marketing: The Business Case for XRI/XDI

iwoman — Thu, 28 Jul 2005 22:25:01 +0000

Dear Marketing: An Open Letter From Your Customer
by Chris Maher of Fosforus

Opening:

Over the years, I have had an uneasy relationship with you. I’ve not cared one bit for being your prospect. And, as it seems that being your customer is just an extension of a permanent, unrelenting and ever-more-intrusive marketing campaign, I’m not nuts about being your customer, either.

He quotes David Glen Mick from a paper Searching for Byzantium: A Personal Journey into Spiritual Questions that Marketing Researchers Rarely Ask

Another set of spiritual questions we seldom ask ourselves concerns the effects of marketing and consumption on human character. By character I do not mean human values, but rather our psychological temperament as we go about our daily activities. What kind of person does marketing and consumption encourage or discourage?

Mick’s answers include examples of qualities of temperament that are, in his opinion, encouraged by marketing and consumption: impatience, incivility, judgmentalism and distrust.

He continues to articulate the problems with marketing and gets to the heart of the matter by offering a new model.

What I’m recommending is the creation of (what I will call) a “custnomer”: a data alias or new “name” for that me that gets profiled by your computer systems.

At a minimum, this will mean that my customer records and data won’t have my real name appended to them. There are too many thieves and scammers out there who are seeking to use my good name and the records attached to it. Grab your nearest CIO and Chief Privacy Officer (and maybe the Chief Security Officer, though that person is probably on Zoloft at present) by their lapels and strongly encourage them to begin in-depth research into the promising work on Extensible Resource Identifiers (XRI) and XRI Data Interchange (XDI).

The Daddy of XRI, Drummond Reed, is someone I consider a friend …is, without question, the darned nicest and most patient technology visionary that you will ever come across. There isn’t an ounce of ego in his dealings with us woefully common folk.

Warning: XRI/XDI is not some obscure, trivial “tech thing” that will only be meaningful to those who mumble to themselves and spend half their lifetimes slaughtering innocents and evil-doers… virtually, that is. XRI/XDI has encoded within it is a simple, powerful idea that will come true over time and will change your business: “My private data is mine.”

He goes on to highlight data anonymity and the work of Latanya Sweeney, Assistant Professor, Institute for Software Research International at Carnegie-Mellon University.

Here’s how Sweeney describes what she does:

Perhaps the biggest clash between technology and society involves privacy. The task of maintaining privacy and confidentiality in a globally networked, technically empowered society is quite difficult, tricky and fun.

Data privacy (or more precisely, data anonymity) is emerging as a new study within computer science that is the study of computational solutions for releasing information about entities (such as people, companies, governments) such that certain properties (such as identity) are controlled while the data remain practically useful. While these problems have been studied, in part, by statisticians and earlier computer scientists, their solutions have been rendered insufficient in today’s technically empowered society. So, in data anonymity, we develop new approaches and tools for today’s computational environment.

My colleagues and I (in the Laboratory for International Data Privacy, for which, I am the director) take a two-prong approach to data anonymity. On the one hand, we work as data detectives and on the other hand, we also work as data protectors.”

The best part is he finished up with the new business model.

I’m thinking that there’s probably some trustworthy business entity—although, I’m hard-pressed to figure out which it might be—that could serve as my proxy. (Now, banks and/or credit card companies, before you leap to any conclusions, take a long look at your information assurance practices and see the part of this article about the Trusted Computing Group.)

I would willingly provide just enough information, credentials and data that authenticate who I am and which, say, establish my credit-worthiness to a “trusted relationship proxy”: some government-certified, insured, audited, secure entity that would establish and manage the data version of “me” and would become the “gateway” to all (or many) of my most important business relationships. Think of this proxy as an agent who serves as a buffer between me and you.

YASN (yet another social network)

iwoman — Wed, 13 Jul 2005 18:39:56 +0000

Simpatico Networks – so far there are no blog posts about them.
They link out to the who’s who of social media on the blogoshpere from their Social Networking 2.0 including ClayShirky, danah boyd, Dave Weinberger, Many-to-Many, Ross Mayfield, Stowe Boyd – my friend Jerry Michalski and Wikipedia.

Seems like their current implementations are focused on different faith communities.

Next gen phone aps – interesting future identity use.

iwoman — Mon, 11 Jul 2005 02:50:51 +0000

Found in this article about next generation phone apps with interesting identity applications.

Curious about the people around you? Pantopic takes the openness, and, well, ‘browseability’ of an online community into the real world. Once you install pantopic, your phone becomes like a webpage that only people in your immediate area can read.

The fun part comes when you link up with pantopic groups in your area. Once you do, you’ll be able to get information about who your friends are hanging out with, and where. It’s going to be a few years before a lot of people have this technology. Pantopic tries to solve the saturation problem by focusing on seeing activity in your groups.

Neighbor node

Identity as Citizen Journalist

iwoman — Mon, 11 Jul 2005 01:06:00 +0000

If you want an identity as a citizen journalist there are Flickr Photographer Press Passes available here.

Web 2.O comodification – great post

iwoman — Mon, 11 Jul 2005 01:02:14 +0000

This post on the comodifiication of Web 2.0. It is worth reading to begin to understand microforamts and why identity is important to make them even cooler.