Saturday, October 18, 2003 at 9:37AM Alex Wellen, co-creator, executive-producer, and co-host of TechTV's CyberCrime, and now touring author of a witty novel about the legal profession, Barman: "My God! What have I done? It's a blawg."
Friday, October 17, 2003 at 8:27PM There are several pages of snapshots from the conference at Carry-On Baggage. Here are Doc's pics, and Marc and Phil have a bunch. Back in California, I understand all construction hell is breaking loose at the house tomorrow, and the office servers will be down this weekend due to a planned power outage. Welcome home!
Friday, October 17, 2003 at 11:22AM Update, 5:00 p.m. Pacific: oops, partial post earlier, complete notes now here.
Talks about the nTags. Even though you could anchor a boat with one, they make you feel like you're in a '50s sci-fi movie: "We greet each other and sometimes have sex with these."
None of us would be here if it weren't for Andre Durand. He turned the notion of identity management inside out, by putting the individual on the inside and everything else on the outside. Three tiers: 1) personal, me, myself and I, 2) assigned or corporate, 3) marketing. Tier 1 (T1) is central to the model. Popeye, I am what I am.
Kim Cameron calls T1 identity "the committee of the whole." Our wallets are Tier 2 habitats. CA driver's license, how many here have a DL with an old address? (Audience responds.) All of us! Each relationship is conducted on the supplier's terms, each is isolated unto itself. Tier 3 habitats are our mailboxes. Andre asked what happens when T1 and T2 have equal power: relationships become two way, they're real relationships, so guess what? T3 goes away. New opportunities open up, we're not sure how that will work because we're used to isolated, 1-sided relationships. This gets you to Cluetrain. All the individual and collective intelligence increases. But what happens beyond it, and how does identity do that?"
Lots of what has gone on here, here and last year, clearly is BuzzPhraser material. (Doc shows enormous spreadsheet of all the buzzphrases tossed around here. IdentoLatin, CollaboLatin, etc. We use the term "market" to mean many things: targets, groups, regions, categories, as an acronym for selling (verb). Sales touch the customer, marketing doesn't (why? 'cause it's "strategic"). Eric Raymond and Sayo Ajiboye say markets operate at 3 levels: at the bottom level, markets are places where exchange happens; above that, we have conversation. In a natural market, no one is really in charge, you have to determine the price in the course of the conversation and it develops from the relationship. An interesting point is we still talk in the language of exchange: delivering services, moving content, adding value. Mechanical language substitutes for relationship: "Honey, I'm going to deliver some love to you." When the 'Net's not there, it's hard to have much of a relationship, the relationships are narrow. This changes when you embrace the grassroots. Meanwhile, as farmers, we sound like paving contractors: "We got your federated identity, right here!" The Liberty Alliance About page is a little bit scary this way...
There are ways to get personal, and whoever pulls it off will get rich. What do we do with the networked customer? We embrace them for big, we enable them for small. What to do? (Shows still from Mel Gibson's "What Women Want.") Think about what customers want: any time, any place, any where, in the networked world, and enable that. Have to table privacy concerns every once in a while to think creatively about where we want to go.
Surprise! Doc lost his power cable at this conference. Wouldn't it be nice if he could register that need? That's $80 to someone. Discusses parallel to RSS. Doc says he's not that technical, the only code he knows is Morse. But doesn't think it would be that hard for an individual provider to know that he's coming down the road right now and needs "x." Thinks RFID could be really powerful in this. Maybe Doc has ideas about the way his supplier could do things. Wouldn't it be better if, rather than just having these thoughts expressed on a gripe site somewhere, a relationship existed for exchange on the point. The 'Net will help dismantle The Matrix. We're going to get the IM systems to work with one another eventually, because people want it and it will happen.
Marc Canter: if we're dismantling The Matrix, what are we "mantling?" Esther: it's like bees and pollen, cross-pollination. Chris: my daughter asked me about dinosaurs, "How did they know they were called dinosaurs? [Laughs] [DMH aside: to Cory, I'm a Pregosaur!]
Doc: I hear Federation and I see Darth Vader. Reaction (channeling David Weinberger) is get that away from me, don't even have that conversation.
Marc Canter: Why are you really wearing a suit? Doc: I just think it looks cool. Esther: Want to leave it in my cab?
How will T3 disappear? The spam that we call mass market advertising is very unwieldy and will fail. The costs are incredibly high. In the long run it will go away as demand gets more equipped to say what it wants. Google profits about $700-800 million per year. Google has explored new ways for buyers and sellers to connect with each other, explored the Holy Grail of advertising: messages you may want. They're going to blow up advertising in the next 2-3 years, and they need competition.
Interesting concluding discussion involving Chris and Esther about time and attention. Are the number of relationships we can have finite, do they devalue as they multiply? Eric mentions that Doc is a walking network (so true).
Audience question: "Are we in danger of moving from spam to meatloaf?" Doc thinks we're getting both at the moment.
Audience question: If we're dismantling The Matrix, who do you guys see as Keanu Reeves? Doc and Esther in unison: "Chris Locke!"
Friday, October 17, 2003 at 9:00AM Just walked into the a.m. session, Cory is talking about use cases for RFID and the identity of things: "Is there transfat in this 'I Can't Believe It's Not Veal?'" Copyright implications of owning the database, owning the relationship. Discusses W3C model for Auto ID Center, representations that copyright won't be enforced. Esther clarifies that libel laws, non-ownership oriented laws should continue to apply.
On to privacy considerations. Cory: EZ Pass logging as example, you need the ability to turn these things off. People use copper mesh bags to temporarily deactivate them. Would like to see the ability to kill the RFID or convert it to a private address base, so that basically you can't discover that it exists or what it corresponds to unless you're the purchaser or someone authorized by the purchaser.
Esther: problems won't be with RFID per se or the members of the Auto ID Center (MIT). It's with those developing products like this on the periphery and the potential misuses of the data.
RFID usage and registries need to control and protect access. You may want to know immediately if your child's car seat has been recalled, but don't want others to know about the adult videos you rent.
Audience question triggers response from Cory about the "race for the bottom:" What countries are most prone to using RFID for social control? Scandanavian countries, not good. Esther adds US and Burma.
Phil Becker asks about unintended consequences of the creation of this data. Can rights management technology assign policies at the collection point so that its usage going forward is constrained? Yes, this could work. There's no protocol yet from the Auto ID Center. All things could have rights associated with them, the question is what's a practical way to assert those policies and profiles, and the ability to make those rights flexible over time. Need to pay attention to rights transfers accompanying the transfer of an object. Cory: Wal-Mart, pay-on-scan, they have an enormous amount of market power that allows Wal-Mart to control all the data to the end point. Privacy is about power. I can't compel the IRS to take my data in my DRM wrapper. DRM doesn't stop the person on the other side from passing along your information verbally. Cory's sure there's a notation in the Apple database somewhere that he can do nothing about that says, "This guy's a giant, high-octane pain in the ass who breaks six PowerBooks a year." His tech support calls get answered, "Oh, it's you." Every draconian EULA contains language that specifies the licensor can "come on over, wear your underwear, clean out your fridge, and make long distance calls," and there's nothing you can do about it. Esther asks why Cory just doesn't toss his Mac and buy a PC; he's been tempted. There's a difference between the ability to throw something you own out and the ability to control it.
Cory, interesting use case is smart furniture. Would be great to be able to throw things under the bed, then ask the bed what's under it. Smart closets: "You are a sysadmin, today you will wear a black t-shirt. You are a sysadmin, tomorrow you will wear a black t-shirt." Esther: "I also leave clothes in cabs..." [Good laugh]
Esther, wrapping up. It's about power, who can instruct the technology to do what. For the user, there's this tradeoff between convenience and control. The default is something that seems to make sense as long as the user can change it as he becomes more familiar with the system and its implications. Transparency is key: people will be comfortable with risks as long as they know what they are. System must be both precise and understandable.
Friday, October 17, 2003 at 7:24AM Crawford Kilian writes Legal Technicalities in conjunction with the course on Communications for the Legal Secretary (CMNS 159) at Capilano College in Vancouver. [Via Blawg.org]
