identity – Page 39

Fredo, I love you, but don’t ever side with anyone against the Family again

Published April 16, 2008 by cgerrish

Michael Corleone

Differences in collections are notable.

Tribal / Clan / Family: a collection of humans in all their complexity, emotions, power and social relations.

Power Outlet

Micro-Communities: humans limited/masked/filtered as social objects with well-defined APIs for commerce and other forms of interchange and transaction.

Sometimes when we talk about the social graph and its extensions into the network, we forget that we who are speaking are humans, and we are talking about humans.

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Twitter = Bird: Bird is the Word, B-b-bird, b-b-bird…

Published April 10, 2008 by cgerrish

Yeah, the Trashmen did the best version. And that scene from Full Metal Jacket still haunts my dreams. But here’s a nice Twitter commercial by the Ramones. Everybody’s heard about the b-b-bird…

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Online Identity: We are many, we are a swarm

Published March 19, 2008 by cgerrish

The Swarm

As we think about identity in the online world, we come to realize that the “I” that the identity is meant to correspond with, is multiple. Not in the sense of schizophrenia, or multiple personalities, but in the sense that there are many facets that make up and individual. When we buy a bottle of single-malt scotch, we want to only show the facet that says “over 21.” But there is a sense in which we are many different people. We have one persona at work, another at home. One mask online, and another with our children. We have one identity with our parents, and another when we tell a joke.

We have a work email address and a personal email address. Sometimes we have more than one Open ID. We have one persona on Facebook, and a different one on LinkedIn. We are one way on Twitter, and a different way altogether on our blog.

The poet Pablo Neruda wrote:

Of the many men whom I am, whom we are,
I cannot settle on a single one.
They are lost to me under the cover of clothing
They have departed for another city.

We prefer that people be a single identity. We call people with more than one identity, two-faced. We think of grifters, tricksters and shape-shifters.

Another thread of the conversation from the Bible, Luke 8:30:

And he asked him, What is thy name?
And he answered, saying,
Our name is Legion: for we are many.

Legion is a man possessed by many demons. Demons that are cast out to leave the individual soul. Identity and soul are closely identified. Can we have many identities and a single soul? Is that the true center of a human being, the thing that is singular about a person? Should that individual thing be represented by a single online identity? The Dean of Grace Cathedral, Alan Jones, often comments on the fact that in our modern age, we see the idea of the soul extensively discussed in our secular literature. We live in an age where many can only believe in the soul, but nothing more.

We are many, and as we externalize our many selves into online identity, we’ll find things to be a lot less precise, and more crowded than we expected. While at some level we yearn for clarity, ambiguity is at the heart of our ability to maintain our privacy and anonymity. Will our many selves be built into the identity infrastructure that is peering over the event horizon?

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The Google Cloud is Dead, Now Where’s My Data? Toward Data Liquidity…

Published February 10, 2008 by cgerrish

dollars

We tend to think that certain things will be around forever. Brands we love, bull markets and governments all act as though they will continue indefinitely. Dominance intends that its dominance persist, but everything comes to an end. If all your personal data lived in Google’s cloud, what happens when Google goes out of business? How are you going to get your data out? Is cloud-based computing being built with the assumption that all of the players will exist forever? The more locked in your data is to proprietary formats, the less liquid it is.

Money, cash in particular, has become data; and the speed with which it can move and transform defines its liquidity. How liquid is our personal data? Those financial institutions that custody our financial assets cooperate so that we can move our holdings from one institution to another. How do the web institutions that custody our personal data measure up?

Marc Canter has talked about having a “DeBabelizer” for personal data. That’s a tool we used in the old days to translate graphic file formats to work with our local platform and toolset. It was essential in the days before consolidation and cross-platform graphic software. The prospect of having to unscramble my personal data is not comforting. The only reason to have a DeBabelizer is that one is surrounded by Babel.

Movements like data portability are largely a matter of metaphors and memes. The technology has to be very simple to actually work. The extent to which the meme is highly contagious within the general user population is the extent of the movement’s success. My contribution to the conversation is to measure the liquidity of personal data. For instance, I can imagine trading liquidity for higher value. But I’d like to know when I’m entering into that contract.

One Comment

Category: identity

Fredo, I love you, but don’t ever side with anyone against the Family again

Twitter = Bird: Bird is the Word, B-b-bird, b-b-bird…

Online Identity: We are many, we are a swarm

The Google Cloud is Dead, Now Where’s My Data? Toward Data Liquidity…