WRITTEN ON September 23rd, 2005 BY Luke Razzell AND STORED IN What do we want?

William has prompted me to write “A concise statement for the lay person of the [personal identity] problem we’re ideally trying to solve (ie not constrained by present technology preconceptions)”. So here goes [ok, so perhaps “concise” isn’t the first word that springs to mind]!

¸,.»§«,¸¸,.·´¯`·.,¸¸,.»§« »§«,¸¸,·´¯`·.,¸¸,.»§«·.,¸¸,.

Online me

People are unique. Everyone has their own world-view or ontology, shaped by their past experiences, present circumstances and future aspirations and fears. When people interact with each other in the physical world, their perceptions, actions and reactions are naturally—and inevitably—governed by their respective ontololgies. For instance, a Palestinian says “freedom fighter” and an Israeli says “terrorist” in referring to the same person, so they must mean different things by these words in the particular context they are using them. And these divergent contextual understandings of meaning clearly stem from the contrasting culture and life experiences of these two individuals.

The observation that interactions between people are mediated by their respective ontologies holds true both for individuals and groups, in that a group gains its identity from particular ontological commonalities amongst its members—such as enthusiasm for environmentalism amongst members of the Green Party, or shared genes and common history for members of a family, for example. If a Green Party member puts on their party badge and talks to a passerby, they are doing so as a representative of the Green Party community, and will invariably express themselves in a way that is informed by the ontology of that community, espousing investment in energy-saving technology, for example.

As the networked technology, and the internet in particular, continue to evolve apace, and our lives become increasingly pervaded by and dependent upon them, people are more and more expressing a desire that their identity should embodied in their digital experiences just as it is into their physical life. When I interact with friends, communities, government and commercial services online, I want to be able to do so as “me”.

Namely, I want to be able:

1. To express my identity, and the identity of the digital things I create, in terms of my own ontology, and to exchange that information with others.

2. To find and use the information others make available to me, even though it may be expressed in terms of an ontology that differs from my own.

3. To divulge information about myself to the extent that I am comfortable in any given context, and be able to trust that information will only be shared with others according to my wishes

4. To decide who I want to trust as a reliable source of information about other people and things

5. To be able selectively to delegate the above points to be resolved in terms of my communities’ ontologies and preferences.

These points appear a little gnomic in the abstract, so in order to understand the benefits of a System that enshrines them, let’s look at a notional real-world example from the life of a fictional character, Frank, that is enabled by our proposed technology.

Frank’s story, circa 2008

Frank has an account with an online personal data management service, MyData. Frank records in his MyData account personal details such as his name, date of birth and so on, and he also keeps copies of his digital media (bookmarks, photos, video etc.) and information about his personal contacts and communities. Frank elects to have his personal data on MyData auto-synchronised with his mobile device: as he takes photos and adds contacts to his address book and so on, all that data is automatically uploaded to his MyData account daily.

Because the System allows people to exchange data without agreeing on how to describe it (with their own ontology), it doesn’t matter that MyData and the software on Frank’s phone actually have somewhat different ways of describing his data: the two are still able to “talk” to one another. For instance, although MyData stores Frank’s name as his “username”, within a collection of data called “user details”, whereas his phone stores it as his “name”, within “personal information”, the two applications understand that they are nevertheless talking about the same bit of data.

This flexibility of being able to exchange data without describing it in the same way means that Frank can use any number of other online services and have them “talk” to his MyData account or phone to access the information he wants to provide them, rather than having to laboriously go through the process of establishing a persona with each service. And from the point of view of the developers of these services, rather than having to pre-agree on how to describe information (as they used to have to do before the advent of the System), they are able to use their own descriptive ontology and yet still exchange data with each other. This allows Frank to use lots of different services, each with their own distinct identity and range of features, yet at the same time to maintain an integrated online life that is centred on his identity.

In our System, the more similar two ontologies are, the more reliable is the data exchange between them—so services that complement one another in their functionality tend to co-evolve towards increasingly similar ways of describing information. However, unlike in pre-System days, where everyone had to agree in advance as to how to describe information before they could exchange data at all, this co-evolution is often an organic and incremental process. Frank’s online world is an eco-system of autonomous yet richly inter-linked services: his MyData, mobile phone, banking, e-government, community publishing, photo sharing, online consumer goods and audio/video download accounts are all integrated with one another—in the manner and to the extent of Frank’s choosing.

In order to safeguard against identity theft, Frank maintains multiple stores of his information, each containing only a sub-set of the whole. He withholds a few key bits of personal information, such as his home address and phone number, from his MyData account, keeping them stored on his phone and merely having his MyData account “point” towards his phone when people or other services ask for that information. In this way, even if an intruder breaks into Frank’s MyData account, they can only get a partial set of information about him. Also, Frank doesn’t record his banking details anywhere outside of his bank, reading the details from his debit and credit cards when he makes a payment online.

If Frank loses his mobile, he simply needs to notify his phone network provider, who will deactivate his old SIM card and send him a new one. Similarly, if his MyData account is compromised by an intruder, Frank can reset his password by confirming his access to his own email account. If Frank loses his bank card, he can have it cancelled and replaced immediately. In this way, Frank can quickly get back in control of each aspect of his digital identity should it become compromised.

Frank also has an ID Card, issued to him by the British Government (Frank lives in Norfolk). Frank’s ID Card, like his mobile phone and bank card, effectively helps him to establish a particular persona with other people and services. The ID Card incorporates iris, fingerprint and voice biometric signatures for Frank, and when he goes through customs at the airport, he is required to authenticate himself as the card’s owner, rather than simply showing his passport as in previous times. Frank also has to use his ID Card to vote in local and general elections. Also, when he moved banks last year, Frank was required to authenticate himself using his ID Card—The Card tends to be used in situations where security is at a premium, but it hasn’t really taken off as a more general means of authentication. Many people, including Frank, feel that a certain degree of autonomy from one’s government is a healthy thing.

The ID Card was originally envisaged as part of a ambitious centrally-controlled Goverment IT system that would keep track of its citizens across every area of their public lives, but with the advent of the System it was realised that a person-centred approach to identity management, where each individual can choose how and if they “join up” the various areas of their life, and who they disclose what information to, was infinitely better from the points of view of security, privacy and the self-determination of the individual.

Frank benefits greatly as an individual from the System, but beyond even that he also benefits as member of multiple communities. Unlike in pre-System times, the online aspect of Frank’s communities are not limited to any particular online service—just as Frank is able to express his individual identity across the eco-system of the services he uses, so his communities’ identities pervade an eco-system of services. When Frank wishes to invite his photo-sharing contacts to join him in co-authoring a written piece on “social media sharing” within his social publishing service, he is able to send the invitation and to authorise their access from within the publishing service, even though his friends aren’t members of this service.

Because Frank integrates all his online contacts into his MyData account, and points his other services to that account, those other services automatically understand who he is talking about, and where to find them. Because security is a relatively low priority for photo-sharing and community publishing services (compared to a bank or e-government service), these two services federate authentication with one another, so if Frank or his friends are logged in with one service, the other one will automatically recognise them as logged in also. This saves a great deal of bother with logins when moving from one service to another, particularly when Frank uses the great desktop application, PhotoWrite, that provides an interface to both services simultaneously from within a single, integrated visual environment.

Frank also benefits from the collective wisdom of his communities when searching for information. Firstly, he can delegate the definition of what he means to a given community: so even without disambiguating what he means by “bass” personally, by handing over the resolution of the meaning to his “Sea Fishing Enthusiasts” community, his search comes back with fish. This is most useful.

Secondly, Frank can choose to allow the resolution of his query to be delegated by multiple steps—from friend, to friend-of-a-friend and so on—in order to home in on the best available result. He can also choose the number of steps of delegation that can be carried out on his query in order to return a result: from one step (friend) to an arbitrary number (although in practice, he rarely bothers to change the default settings of his search application here). This system of delegation reflects the way people relate to one another in the physical world: we ask a trusted friend or authority for their opinion, who might themselves cite the opinion of another friend or authority, or even go and ask that other person as a result of our original question. On the other hand, we might just want our friend’s opinion.

Frank decides to look for first-edition Dickens novels to add to his antique book collection. Choosing to allow delegated resolution of his query, he asks a mate who also collects antique books, who delegates the query to his “Antique Book Community” (Frank bookmarks this to join later!), who further delegate it to the “Hard Times Bookshop” in Chipping Ludbury (all this delegation happens automatically, guided by the ontology of each party). Success—Hard Times have first editions of David Copperfield and The Pickwick Papers!

And because Frank’s query process returns not only the information he wants, but also information about who and where that information came from, the next time he searches for first-edition Dickens novels, he knows to go directly to the bookshop. And as Frank becomes known amongst his (bookish) friends as an authority on antique books, his online information naturally enough becomes their first point of call when seeking antique books.

But it is not only as consumers and hobbyists that people benefit from the System: the powerful dynamic towards individual and community interaction and integration that the System embodies has become a driving force for political change, as like-minded people group together and express their opinions to politicians and business leaders: the nascent Blogosphere pointed the way to the System’s radically more potent empowerment of the ordinary person, and of the People. General elections have receeded in importance in the public’s consciousness as politicians feel increasingly impelled to engage with and respond to the considered and focused will of their constituents on an ongoing basis. Frank feels like Britain is once more becoming his country, not just somewhere he exists on the sufferance of others.

The System is evolving, organically, to an ever-higher state of efficiency. Individuals and communities exist independently, yet in evolving relationship, exploring their difference while growing together in mutual interest and aspiration. The system is a living thing, made up of myriad sub-organisms of digital identity. It is changing Frank’s world for the better. It is changing the whole world for the better.

[Cross posted at weaverluke]William has prompted me to write “A concise statement for the lay person of the [personal identity] problem we’re ideally trying to solve (ie not constrained by present technology preconceptions)”. So here goes [ok, so perhaps “concise” isn’t the first word that springs to mind]!

¸,.»§«,¸¸,.·´¯`·.,¸¸,.»§« »§«,¸¸,·´¯`·.,¸¸,.»§«·.,¸¸,.

Online me

People are unique. Everyone has their own world-view or ontology, shaped by their past experiences, present circumstances and future aspirations and fears. When people interact with each other in the physical world, their perceptions, actions and reactions are naturally—and inevitably—governed by their respective ontololgies. For instance, a Palestinian says “freedom fighter” and an Israeli says “terrorist” in referring to the same person, so they must mean different things by these words in the particular context they are using them. And these divergent contextual understandings of meaning clearly stem from the contrasting culture and life experiences of these two individuals.

The observation that interactions between people are mediated by their respective ontologies holds true both for individuals and groups, in that a group gains its identity from particular ontological commonalities amongst its members—such as enthusiasm for environmentalism amongst members of the Green Party, or shared genes and common history for members of a family, for example. If a Green Party member puts on their party badge and talks to a passerby, they are doing so as a representative of the Green Party community, and will invariably express themselves in a way that is informed by the ontology of that community, espousing investment in energy-saving technology, for example.

As the networked technology, and the internet in particular, continue to evolve apace, and our lives become increasingly pervaded by and dependent upon them, people are more and more expressing a desire that their identity should embodied in their digital experiences just as it is into their physical life. When I interact with friends, communities, government and commercial services online, I want to be able to do so as “me”.

Namely, I want to be able:

1. To express my identity, and the identity of the digital things I create, in terms of my own ontology, and to exchange that information with others.

2. To find and use the information others make available to me, even though it may be expressed in terms of an ontology that differs from my own.

3. To divulge information about myself to the extent that I am comfortable in any given context, and be able to trust that information will only be shared with others according to my wishes

4. To decide who I want to trust as a reliable source of information about other people and things

5. To be able selectively to delegate the above points to be resolved in terms of my communities’ ontologies and preferences.

These points appear a little gnomic in the abstract, so in order to understand the benefits of a System that enshrines them, let’s look at a notional real-world example from the life of a fictional character, Frank, that is enabled by our proposed technology.

Frank’s story, circa 2008

Frank has an account with an online personal data management service, MyData. Frank records in his MyData account personal details such as his name, date of birth and so on, and he also keeps copies of his digital media (bookmarks, photos, video etc.) and information about his personal contacts and communities. Frank elects to have his personal data on MyData auto-synchronised with his mobile device: as he takes photos and adds contacts to his address book and so on, all that data is automatically uploaded to his MyData account daily.

Because the System allows people to exchange data without agreeing on how to describe it (with their own ontology), it doesn’t matter that MyData and the software on Frank’s phone actually have somewhat different ways of describing his data: the two are still able to “talk” to one another. For instance, although MyData stores Frank’s name as his “username”, within a collection of data called “user details”, whereas his phone stores it as his “name”, within “personal information”, the two applications understand that they are nevertheless talking about the same bit of data.

This flexibility of being able to exchange data without describing it in the same way means that Frank can use any number of other online services and have them “talk” to his MyData account or phone to access the information he wants to provide them, rather than having to laboriously go through the process of establishing a persona with each service. And from the point of view of the developers of these services, rather than having to pre-agree on how to describe information (as they used to have to do before the advent of the System), they are able to use their own descriptive ontology and yet still exchange data with each other. This allows Frank to use lots of different services, each with their own distinct identity and range of features, yet at the same time to maintain an integrated online life that is centred on his identity.

In our System, the more similar two ontologies are, the more reliable is the data exchange between them—so services that complement one another in their functionality tend to co-evolve towards increasingly similar ways of describing information. However, unlike in pre-System days, where everyone had to agree in advance as to how to describe information before they could exchange data at all, this co-evolution is often an organic and incremental process. Frank’s online world is an eco-system of autonomous yet richly inter-linked services: his MyData, mobile phone, banking, e-government, community publishing, photo sharing, online consumer goods and audio/video download accounts are all integrated with one another—in the manner and to the extent of Frank’s choosing.

In order to safeguard against identity theft, Frank maintains multiple stores of his information, each containing only a sub-set of the whole. He withholds a few key bits of personal information, such as his home address and phone number, from his MyData account, keeping them stored on his phone and merely having his MyData account “point” towards his phone when people or other services ask for that information. In this way, even if an intruder breaks into Frank’s MyData account, they can only get a partial set of information about him. Also, Frank doesn’t record his banking details anywhere outside of his bank, reading the details from his debit and credit cards when he makes a payment online.

If Frank loses his mobile, he simply needs to notify his phone network provider, who will deactivate his old SIM card and send him a new one. Similarly, if his MyData account is compromised by an intruder, Frank can reset his password by confirming his access to his own email account. If Frank loses his bank card, he can have it cancelled and replaced immediately. In this way, Frank can quickly get back in control of each aspect of his digital identity should it become compromised.

Frank also has an ID Card, issued to him by the British Government (Frank lives in Norfolk). Frank’s ID Card, like his mobile phone and bank card, effectively helps him to establish a particular persona with other people and services. The ID Card incorporates iris, fingerprint and voice biometric signatures for Frank, and when he goes through customs at the airport, he is required to authenticate himself as the card’s owner, rather than simply showing his passport as in previous times. Frank also has to use his ID Card to vote in local and general elections. Also, when he moved banks last year, Frank was required to authenticate himself using his ID Card—The Card tends to be used in situations where security is at a premium, but it hasn’t really taken off as a more general means of authentication. Many people, including Frank, feel that a certain degree of autonomy from one’s government is a healthy thing.

The ID Card was originally envisaged as part of a ambitious centrally-controlled Goverment IT system that would keep track of its citizens across every area of their public lives, but with the advent of the System it was realised that a person-centred approach to identity management, where each individual can choose how and if they “join up” the various areas of their life, and who they disclose what information to, was infinitely better from the points of view of security, privacy and the self-determination of the individual.

Frank benefits greatly as an individual from the System, but beyond even that he also benefits as member of multiple communities. Unlike in pre-System times, the online aspect of Frank’s communities are not limited to any particular online service—just as Frank is able to express his individual identity across the eco-system of the services he uses, so his communities’ identities pervade an eco-system of services. When Frank wishes to invite his photo-sharing contacts to join him in co-authoring a written piece on “social media sharing” within his social publishing service, he is able to send the invitation and to authorise their access from within the publishing service, even though his friends aren’t members of this service.

Because Frank integrates all his online contacts into his MyData account, and points his other services to that account, those other services automatically understand who he is talking about, and where to find them. Because security is a relatively low priority for photo-sharing and community publishing services (compared to a bank or e-government service), these two services federate authentication with one another, so if Frank or his friends are logged in with one service, the other one will automatically recognise them as logged in also. This saves a great deal of bother with logins when moving from one service to another, particularly when Frank uses the great desktop application, PhotoWrite, that provides an interface to both services simultaneously from within a single, integrated visual environment.

Frank also benefits from the collective wisdom of his communities when searching for information. Firstly, he can delegate the definition of what he means to a given community: so even without disambiguating what he means by “bass” personally, by handing over the resolution of the meaning to his “Sea Fishing Enthusiasts” community, his search comes back with fish. This is most useful.

Secondly, Frank can choose to allow the resolution of his query to be delegated by multiple steps—from friend, to friend-of-a-friend and so on—in order to home in on the best available result. He can also choose the number of steps of delegation that can be carried out on his query in order to return a result: from one step (friend) to an arbitrary number (although in practice, he rarely bothers to change the default settings of his search application here). This system of delegation reflects the way people relate to one another in the physical world: we ask a trusted friend or authority for their opinion, who might themselves cite the opinion of another friend or authority, or even go and ask that other person as a result of our original question. On the other hand, we might just want our friend’s opinion.

Frank decides to look for first-edition Dickens novels to add to his antique book collection. Choosing to allow delegated resolution of his query, he asks a mate who also collects antique books, who delegates the query to his “Antique Book Community” (Frank bookmarks this to join later!), who further delegate it to the “Hard Times Bookshop” in Chipping Ludbury (all this delegation happens automatically, guided by the ontology of each party). Success—Hard Times have first editions of David Copperfield and The Pickwick Papers!

And because Frank’s query process returns not only the information he wants, but also information about who and where that information came from, the next time he searches for first-edition Dickens novels, he knows to go directly to the bookshop. And as Frank becomes known amongst his (bookish) friends as an authority on antique books, his online information naturally enough becomes their first point of call when seeking antique books.

But it is not only as consumers and hobbyists that people benefit from the System: the powerful dynamic towards individual and community interaction and integration that the System embodies has become a driving force for political change, as like-minded people group together and express their opinions to politicians and business leaders: the nascent Blogosphere pointed the way to the System’s radically more potent empowerment of the ordinary person, and of the People. General elections have receeded in importance in the public’s consciousness as politicians feel increasingly impelled to engage with and respond to the considered and focused will of their constituents on an ongoing basis. Frank feels like Britain is once more becoming his country, not just somewhere he exists on the sufferance of others.

The System is evolving, organically, to an ever-higher state of efficiency. Individuals and communities exist independently, yet in evolving relationship, exploring their difference while growing together in mutual interest and aspiration. The system is a living thing, made up of myriad sub-organisms of digital identity. It is changing Frank’s world for the better. It is changing the whole world for the better.

[Cross posted at weaverluke]