Comments on: More on Identity http://confusedofcalcutta.com/2006/08/31/more-on-identity/ a blog about information Fri, 19 Mar 2010 04:58:47 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 hourly 1 By: Don Marti http://confusedofcalcutta.com/2006/08/31/more-on-identity/comment-page-1/#comment-6085 Don Marti Thu, 31 Aug 2006 17:07:53 +0000 http://confusedofcalcutta.com/2006/08/31/more-on-identity/#comment-6085 We have a user-driven identity infrastructure already: the OpenPGP Web of Trust. http://kitenet.net/~joey/blog/entry/id_fraud.html The problems with it are in usability, not architecture. Currently PGP and GPG usability is terrible, but the fundamental operations are simple and could be integrated into network client software, cash machines, and other places. Shouldn't companies be working on interfaces to a simple system that works instead of having expensive Identity Conferences with golf tournaments? (Look how Interactive Television worked out.) For example, when people generate an identity, the software should print hard-copy revocations in bar code, pre-addressed to several services that offer to scan and post to keyservers. Then put the revocations and instructions in your safe deposit box. If your "identity is stolen" just revoke it and establish a new one. We have a user-driven identity infrastructure already: the OpenPGP Web of Trust.

http://kitenet.net/~joey/blog/entry/id_fraud.html

The problems with it are in usability, not architecture. Currently PGP and GPG usability is terrible, but the fundamental operations are simple and could be integrated into network client software, cash machines, and other places.

Shouldn’t companies be working on interfaces to a simple system that works instead of having expensive Identity Conferences with golf tournaments? (Look how Interactive Television worked out.)

For example, when people generate an identity, the software should print hard-copy revocations in bar code, pre-addressed to several services that offer to scan and post to keyservers. Then put the revocations and instructions in your safe deposit box. If your “identity is stolen” just revoke it and establish a new one.

]]> By: Stephen Smoliar http://confusedofcalcutta.com/2006/08/31/more-on-identity/comment-page-1/#comment-6076 Stephen Smoliar Thu, 31 Aug 2006 15:35:56 +0000 http://confusedofcalcutta.com/2006/08/31/more-on-identity/#comment-6076 JP, as usual, you (and Doc) have very admirable values; and, as usual, they are up against some very harsh realities. The harshest of these realities is that promoters of new technology seem to have an innate tendency to be sloppy in their use of language (just as Kenneth Burke observed that political platforms are long on rhetoric and grammatically careless, as I may have mentioned in another comment). After all, the sloppier you are, the harder it is to pin your offering down to anything specific; so I am afraid is it a little bit naive to assume that anyone promoting CRM has any serious acquaintance with a concept as subtle as "relationship!" As a case in point, consider this interview run in CRM News last June: http://www.crmbuyer.com/story/51165.html Consider, also, the link to my Talkback entry, the only one I can recall submitting with a flame icon! While the interview is supposed to be about how Dell has "improved" its customer service, there is never any mention of the fact that, at the end of the day, successful customer service arises from effective engagement through communication. Remember, the primary functionality for customer service in CRM is a database of scripts to walk the call center operator through an incoming call. At their best these scripts are innocuously inadequate; and at their worst they are actually Trojan horses for cross-selling (as was recently revealed when some AOL scripts were disclosed). None of this does a relationship make! There is also at least one other important lesson to be gained from reading those scripts: They all seem to be based on the assumption that all problems reside on the customer side. In other words the vendor is never wrong! Can you imagine a worse way to begin a "relationship?" Personally, I think that today's problems of identity go far beyond the inadequacies of "relationship" technology to live up to its name. Think of the language we encounter today about "network organizations," "boundary-less organizations," and "virtual organizations." Think, then, of the extent to which our personal identity is shaped by the environment in which we work. Well, as that environment becomes more and more virtual, what will be its impact on our own sense of identity! Given that this sense of identity is tightly coupled to our sense of consciousness, not to mention our "knowledge," what is to become of us as functioning individuals if our environment is deliberately undermining that sense of identity? JP, as usual, you (and Doc) have very admirable values; and, as usual, they are up against some very harsh realities. The harshest of these realities is that promoters of new technology seem to have an innate tendency to be sloppy in their use of language (just as Kenneth Burke observed that political platforms are long on rhetoric and grammatically careless, as I may have mentioned in another comment). After all, the sloppier you are, the harder it is to pin your offering down to anything specific; so I am afraid is it a little bit naive to assume that anyone promoting CRM has any serious acquaintance with a concept as subtle as “relationship!”

As a case in point, consider this interview run in CRM News last June:

http://www.crmbuyer.com/story/51165.html

Consider, also, the link to my Talkback entry, the only one I can recall submitting with a flame icon! While the interview is supposed to be about how Dell has “improved” its customer service, there is never any mention of the fact that, at the end of the day, successful customer service arises from effective engagement through communication. Remember, the primary functionality for customer service in CRM is a database of scripts to walk the call center operator through an incoming call. At their best these scripts are innocuously inadequate; and at their worst they are actually Trojan horses for cross-selling (as was recently revealed when some AOL scripts were disclosed). None of this does a relationship make!

There is also at least one other important lesson to be gained from reading those scripts: They all seem to be based on the assumption that all problems reside on the customer side. In other words the vendor is never wrong! Can you imagine a worse way to begin a “relationship?”

Personally, I think that today’s problems of identity go far beyond the inadequacies of “relationship” technology to live up to its name. Think of the language we encounter today about “network organizations,” “boundary-less organizations,” and “virtual organizations.” Think, then, of the extent to which our personal identity is shaped by the environment in which we work. Well, as that environment becomes more and more virtual, what will be its impact on our own sense of identity! Given that this sense of identity is tightly coupled to our sense of consciousness, not to mention our “knowledge,” what is to become of us as functioning individuals if our environment is deliberately undermining that sense of identity?

]]> By: NextIdentity http://confusedofcalcutta.com/2006/08/31/more-on-identity/comment-page-1/#comment-6075 NextIdentity Thu, 31 Aug 2006 15:33:40 +0000 http://confusedofcalcutta.com/2006/08/31/more-on-identity/#comment-6075 "Identity is a first-person matter. It comes from the inside, not the outside. So does everything else we do as individuals. "...."I want to see, and be part of, a society that encourages people, that provides constructive criticism, that has covenant and not contract relationships, that believes in building people up rather than smashing people down."... beautiful, but these words are just a contemporary imagery... Through reflection we can have a pale sense of our identity, but we can`t compare. We need others to compare.. to obtain an identity... and a convenant is, by definition a contract. The contract, well done, is our freedom, that socio-politically means democracy... We need all these kind of principles to define us as humans. I live in a country that has just a few years of freedom in the recent history, so i felt all these boundaires... Its not so funny, even if it sounds poetically. Anyway, congratulations for the pozitive initiative and look forward to the meanings. “Identity is a first-person matter. It comes from the inside, not the
outside. So does everything else we do as individuals. “….”I want to see, and be part of, a society that encourages people, that provides constructive criticism, that has covenant and not contract relationships, that believes in building people up rather than smashing people down.”… beautiful, but these words are just a contemporary imagery… Through reflection we can have a pale sense of our identity, but we can`t compare. We need others to compare.. to obtain an identity… and a convenant is, by definition a contract. The contract, well done, is our freedom, that socio-politically means democracy… We need all these kind of principles to define us as humans. I live in a country that has just a few years of freedom in the recent history, so i felt all these boundaires… Its not so funny, even if it sounds poetically. Anyway, congratulations for the pozitive initiative and look forward to the meanings.

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