Posted 8:55 AM (0) comments

The blind philosophes of Identity

Kim has now responded ("Through the looking glass") to my Humpty Dumpty post, and we're beginning to sound like a couple of old philosophes arguing about whether or not to include "le weekend" and "hamburguer" and other Franglais in the French dictionary.

We really aren't that far apart.

In his post, Kim recalls launching the name "metadirectory" back in '95 with Craig Burton and I certainly don't dispute that. In fact, up until 1999, I even agreed somewhat with his definition:

"In my world, a metadirectory is one that holds metadata - not actual objects, but descriptions of objects and their locations in other physical directories."

But as I continued in that Network World column:

"Unfortunately, vendors such as Zoomit took the term 'metadirectory' and redefined it so it could be used to describe what I'd call an überdirectory - a directory that gathers and holds all the data from all your other directories."

Since no one took up my use of "uberdirectory," we started using "metadirectory" to describe the situations which required a new identity store and "virtual directory" for those that didn't.

So perhaps we're just another couple of blind men trying to describe an elephant.

Labels: Burton, identity, metadirectory, virtual directory

Posted 8:25 AM (1) comments

More on ownership

David Recordon has now further developed the ideas ("We Are Opening the Social Graph") first presented in the "Thoughts on the Social Graph" manifesto he wrote along with Brad Fitzpatrick. It's an important work, but begins with a flaw which may, ultimately, prove fatal.

"Your lists of friends and connections on the social websites that you use, sometimes called your social graph, belongs to you. No one company should own who you know and how you know them."

This is a strawman argument, though, as no company claims to own this data. And, in fact, there can be no ownership of what amounts to, simply, a group of facts. What companies do own, however, are the tools for constructing the graph. And, I fear, too many will see the tools - and their output - and claim it as their own.

But consider this analogy:

You take your dirty clothes to the laundromat. You wash them in the washers there, then dry them in the dryers. The laundromat doesn't claim 'ownership' of your clothing (either dirty or clean), but neither can you claim 'ownership' of the cleaning process nor of the equipment (the 'tools') used to do the cleaning. You pay the laundromat for the use of their tools and processes and , in return, you're presented with clean clothes. The "cleanliness" was always present in the clothes, it simply needed some processing to bring it out.

So, too, your friends and relationships need processing in order to form a rational 'social graph'. You can pay some company (either in cash or in kind) to do that for you (like the laundromat) or you can buy or "roll your own" tools to do so (just as you can buy your own washer and dryer).

The sooner we can get away from the disastrous "ownership" meme, the sooner we can get to the fun and interesting parts of identity.

Labels: identity, ownership, social networks

Posted 5:18 PM (1) comments

Nobody "owns" my identity data

Mary Hodder, Doc Searls and Drummond Reed have all weighed in over the last day or so on the issue of ownership of identity data. Mary originally quibbled (as did I) over the use of the word "ownership" but now writes:

I've decided that it makes more sense for users to:

1. own their data, solely
2. give a non-exclusive license to sites they "partner" with when they put data at those sites.
3. be able to remove the data, to the extent the site can take it out (backup tapes are problematic)
4. part of the non-exclusive license to the sites needs to include that the sites can distribute the data (RSS feeds, etc) about their activities OR the sites need to have a way for the user to specify the lack of distribution of data or metadata, if the user chooses.

I can't agree. Very little identifying data, in fact, do I actually "own" in the sense that I can do what I please with it. I don't, for example, "own" my social security number, my credit card accounts, my mailing address, my wife (that's a co-owned relationship), etc. At best, I might be thought to be able to control the distribution of the identity data within certain very well defined parameters. But in many cases there are also other parties who also control distribution within "certain very well defined parameters" (e.g., the bank can distribute information about my credit card accounts to certain third parties).

"Ownership" is the wrong word, the wrong paradigm, the wrong meme.

Drummond, in his post, talks about Identity Rights Management (IRM), a much more interesting concept which deals with the distribution and use of identity data. Done right, IRM is neutral on the "ownership" issue but deals with the entities who have rights to distribute and use identity data, how those rights can be licensed or assigned and how the licensing can be enforced through the use of Identity Rights Agreements (IRA). Like Reed, I also urge you to dive in to IRM and IRA by subscribing to the new mailing list.

Labels: identity

Posted 8:40 AM (0) comments

Identity principal

Scott Wilson introduced me to the term "principal" for the human entity to which a digital identity is attached. He sums it up as " 'the person for whom a broker executes an order', that is, the entity outside the system that asserts an identity." He references Stephen Downes, Andy Powell and, especially, a long treatise by Dave Snowden which talks about the five characteristics of an identity -

"1. An identity is not the same thing as a role.
2. An identity does not have rigid boundaries, nor is it susceptible of precise definition.
3. Identity is not absolute, it can change in context or over time although the point of transition (the establishment of a new identity) may not be clear either at the time or in retrospect.
4. Identity in human systems is a strange attractor (to take a key concept from complexity theory).
5. Identity is established by robust resilience and if we understand identity from the perspective of a complex adaptive system then interdependence becomes more important than autonomy."

I might not agree with all that Professor Snowden says, but it is a good starting point for discussion.

Labels: identity