Roll over Beethoven

Rumours continue to grow that Apple will announce a special edition Beatles iPod today as part of making Beatle songs available via iTunes. An event that has been predicted for a very long time, so let’s see what surprises are in store. We’ve had the trademark lawsuit settled once and for all. We’ve had a Beatles song playing in the background while Steve talks. So what will he do for One More Thing? I hope it’s more than iPhone-only Beatle ringtones.

I still haven’t met anyone who would refuse an iPhone.

Of markets and conversations and horses’ mouths

Kathy Sierra met Christopher Locke for the first time a day ago. If you want to know what they spoke about, watch CNN on Monday between 6am and 9am (I am assuming EST, if anyone knows better please comment). Link.

Reviewing identity

When I speak to people about identity, many of the responses go very quickly into detail about federated models and use of microformats and OpenID and and and. This is great, because we clearly have a community talking about standards and fashioning them via usage — trying them out — rather than abusage — pontificating in front of slideware.

As I said, this is great. So what’s the problem? The problem is that it’s a small community. We aren’t going to solve this issue unless we have a somewhat larger number of people truly engaged. One way of engaging people is to keep raising awareness of what identity is about.

Yesterday I promised to review what I thought and felt about identity, and to kick that off, here’s an extract from a year-old post:

The identity debate seems to encompass many disparate things, either directly or indirectly, so I’m going to just list them to begin with:

  • Ecce Homo: A means of identifying who I am, with some other relatively static data, eminently suitable for “microformat” treatment, and probably needing to be combined with some other way of confirming who I am, “two-factor authentication”. Like having a card and a PIN or signature. This is as permanent as can be, a metaphorical passport or fingerprint or iris pattern or whatever. This probably includes all the numerical tags I collect like frequent flyer and affinity memberships. It can include my credit cards and accounts. It is the same regardless of the specific relational or transactional conversation I happen to be in. My gut feel is that each person should have only one of these, and that it should be “small but perfectly formed”. And that it has to exist and be verifiable in a dotorg state.
  • Letters of Intent: A means of letting people know about my intentions, what I’m interested in or looking for. I make known my preferences and interests. Some of them are temporary, some of them are permanent. I choose who I want to tell. As in Doc looking for rental cars. As in my signalling to individuals in my social network that I will be within n miles of where they are at a given time. My information. Signalled to whom I want to. When and where I want to. Giving the listener an opportunity to converse with me and relate to me. Even things like last.fm are variants of this.
  • Tell them Phil sent ya: A way of associating other people’s perceptions of me with me, both qualitative as well as quantitative. This is trust that I can acquire but not control. Ratings I have, whether credit or eBay or college scores or whatever. Variable over time. Not suppressible by me. But challengeable by me, so that dispute or contention can be flagged. I may have many such ratings, used for different purposes, but inspectable at the behest of the requestor. And changed as a result of the conversation.
  • Trust me, I’m a doctor: A way of telling other people my own perception of me. Kitemarking my sites and blogs and articles and photos and quotes and whatever. Here what I am doing is endorsing stuff in the public domain about me, indicating (a) this came from me or (b) even though it does not come from me, I nevertheless approve it, I endorse it. This is like a great seal, a way of stamping that something is Orl Korrect. Or that Kilroy was Here.
  • My name is Bond, James Bond: A licence to do something. Granted by someone else. Usually not transferable. Usually not permanent either.
  • Come up and see my etchings: My choosing to expose things I have done, expired and executed letters of intent. Pictures of my activity with others. Kiss-and-tell. My information. My choice as to whom I share it with. And I can make this choice single-use or temporary or permanent. Probably even includes financial transactions and medical history.

Above and beyond this, I think identity is as much about what I stand for, the community I belong to, the community that will have me as a member. Identity itself is essentially social rather than individual. I will spend the next couple of days going through my own thoughts and notes on the subject, and then summarise them for readers. All this is distinct and separate from design and implementation issues, which will follow later.

Identifying the source of the problem

Ever since I started this blog, I’ve been trying to stress the importance of dealing prudently with the Three Is of Information: Identity, Intellectual Property Rights and the Internet.  Recent events have only served to highlight why.

Most of you are aware of the tragic time that Kathy Sierra has had, her response, the polarised debate that ensued, the continuing firestorm, culminating, at least for the time being, in Alan Herrell’s e-mail to Doc. The blogosphere is a small world; you have seen me refer to Kathy’s writings many times; I have, and continue to have, enormous respect for her and her writings; and I know many of the people involved in the debate (at both extremes!), and count quite a few as my friends. Much has been said in the heat of the moment, and much emotion expressed. These are sad times.

Nobody should have to put up with the perverseness, hate, misogyny and bullying that was directed at Kathy. It cannot be defended or condoned. Full stop. So how are we going to prevent this from happening?

Not by knee-jerk attempts at “governing” what happens on the web; personal empowerment is a key attribute of the web, and should remain so. Let us be careful about introducing cyberlaw sledgehammers.

Not by McCarthyist hounding of people judged by innuendo and insinuation either; the presumption of innocence is not something the web can take away. If we do this, all we do is bring the worst of journalism into the digital world rather than the best, which we are still in a position to do.

Not by polarised emotion and blamestorming and flaming either; I am saddened to see just how many friends I have on both sides of the arguments right now, people I will continue to call my friends. I prefer to take the beam out of my own eye rather than look for motes in my friends’ eyes.

We live in a world that has a lot of evil in it, and the Web gets its share.  While I have seen many attempts to legislate ethics, I have also seen them fail. The community space that is the Web can only be “governed” by community ethics and community values. Civility and common sense are more important than legalism and legislation.

If we get Identity right, we can go a long way towards preventing the recurrence of what Kathy faced. Bullies, especially cyber-bullies, tend to be cowards.

If we get Identity right, we can also go a long way towards preventing Digital McCarthyism as well.

Getting Identity right will help ensure that the Web is a safer place for our children, at home or at school; that Web tools can be used more effectively to teach and communicate.

Getting Identity right will help us ensure that the Web is a safer place for us, as we get and spend and lay waste our powers.

Getting Identity right will allow us to ensure that the Knowledge Commons doesn’t become another Tragedy of the Commons, as we use Identity to push back against mindless DRM and IPR legislation.

It’s all about Identity, and the trust that is engendered when Identity is real. And the things that can happen when trust does not exist, or when Identity is not real.

The entire Kathy Sierra incident is a tragedy, one we can and should learn from. Maybe it’s time we became passionate about Identity. I have enjoyed reading Kathy’s blog; I have also enjoyed reading the blogs of many others scattered right across the spectrum of anger and argument engendered by what happened to Kathy. If we want to continue to enjoy reading such conversations, then we have to do something.

And Identity is where I would begin.

In praise of slow

I guess some of you may have read Carl Honore’s book on the subject; one way or the other, I thought you might enjoy the following links:

If we had no Web, how else would we even begin to consider spending hours watching a cheese mature?

And how else could we enjoy this, a video of someone creating a Lego version of Mario and then laboriously crafting scenes in order to make it watchable?