Independent Advocate for the Rights and Dignity of our Digital Selves
I flew up to portland for recent changes camp that is just beginning this morning. I have had quite a few experience that go like this…
Hi i’m (Mike, Bill, John….)
I’m Kaliya
Oh…your THE Identity Woman.
So this has been interesting. Eugene Kim (he drove up from Eugene with Tom Atlee) is here too so hopefully we will co-lead a session on identity for the wiki and other folks gathered here.
Dana Boyde is working on her PhD at at UC Berkeley. She is about to move to LA to do field research with youth. I read her blog regularly and a lot of what is happening is that youth, there use of technology and exploration of identity. I wanted to share this highlight from her post yesturday and if you are interested in these things you might want to subscribe to her blog.
I am currently more interested in understanding the theoretical and historical underpinnings of youth and identity. That said, what i am doing is not removed from social software. Most youth today use social technologies as part of their coming of age processes. They have far richer social lives than most adults. What they are doing with technology is far more complex. Furthermore, they are really focused on the act of socializing, not collaboration or any other work-centric model. Youth have a lot to teach us about social software – about its strengths, weaknesses and where innovation should go. Obviously, i’m biased – this is the root of how my research is applicable to technologists.
I hope those of you building technology will enjoy my journey to the depths of youth. I certainly am. If not, i’m sorry.
Johannes and I put together the Identity Speed Geeking BOF at O’Reilly Emerging Telephony. It was a great success we had about 20 folks and 5 demonstrations.
Who are you, what do you do, who are you loyal to and why? These deeper questions of identity weave throughout the narrative of Syriana. Yesturday I saw the movie for the second time (the first time was Saturday). As I do everything these days – I kept ‘identity’ in mind and it made it even more depth and intesnsity. I would recommend it to you all.
It is a political economy thriller (my favorite kind). It touches on a range of the complex issues of today’s world.
Identity arises again and again. I am going to write more about this after I see it a third time today.
I posted this on the Identity Gang list back in October. Dick Hart made the assertion that there was no such thing as post post-modernism. I had to chime in.. because it does indeed exist and it relates to identity.
Modernism has its origins in the enlightment ‘rationalism’, absolute
structure and finding ‘the truth’.
Post-Modernism is a critique to modernism. In this structure, there
are no laws maintained to define hierarchical culture. Post-modernism
that asserts that there no hierarchies and that all points of view are
equally valid (except that this is a hierarchy itself putting
non-hierarchy above hierarchy)
Today you have the emergence of Post-post-modernism. It rejects the
“flat” – everything is equal point of view of of post-moderninsm but
not super structured rationalism like Modernism. You might call it a
Polyarchy. Polyarchy was a term that I first heard when Drummond and
Kim were talking. Keep reading through the links…
As if Post-Modernism is not bad enough, reporter Alexandra Jacobs of
the New York Observer claimed her experience aboard the Jet Blue
flight that made an emergency landing at LAX on Wednesday night was
Post-Post-Modern. She said tvs on the plane were showing Fox News and MSNBC coverage of their own demise.
You can hear her talk about it on last week’s This American LIfe
“Back From The Dead” 10/7 – Episode 299
However, some differences are emerging that mark a new phase of
counter culture. One of the most obvious sign of this is the
reemergence of massive protests making flesh the networking of
cultural players who formally would have nothing to do with one
another. Examples of this abound: “teamsters and turtles,” garment
workers of the developing world with college students, anti-war
Republicans. Some may refer to what is going on today as post-post
modernism or hyper-post modernism, others might refer to it as the era
of Globalization.
In the polyarchic system, world politics is no longer essentially
“international” politics, where who gets what, when and how is
determined on the basis of bargaining and fighting among the
nation-states; rather, the international system is now seen as one of
subsystems of a larger and more complex field of relationships.
Panarchy, Polyarchy and Personarchy indicate that what is aimed at is:
– a worldwide open framework free from territorial sovereignties.
– a variety of voluntary systems of personal and social organization,
like parallel autonomous societies, even within the same territory.
– full freedom of association, circulation and action for each and
every human being.
mmm… sounds like people empowerd with their own identities and the
ability to use them to organize and empower themselves in civil
society and the marketplace.
I first heard the term Polyarchy when Drummond, myself and Paul
Trevithic were in Kim’s Cameron’s enjoying a glass of wine. Kim and
Drummond began bantering back and forth about this critical consept
that perhaps defines the what is ‘new’ and a critical underlying
principle in the coming identity layer of the interent.
There is no standard way in generic URI syntax to express “cross
hierarchy” relationships, a directory concept known as polyarchy. Yet
those of us working on the OASIS XRI TC have found polyarchy (which we call cross-references) as essential to the “internetworking of
multiple identifier schemes” as TCP/IP packet exchange is to the
internetworking of multiple LAN protocols.
Kim Cameron is a co-author of this paper on polyarchy.
We describe a new information structure composed of multiple
intersecting hierarchies, which we call Polyarchies. Visualizing
polyarchies enables use of novel views for discovery of relationships
which are very difficult using existing hierarchy visualization tools.
So there is post-post modernism – it is polyarchical. Polyarchy is a
critcial if little talked about property of emerging identity
protocols.
While we will be hanging out at Syndicate this week singing “Kum Bah Ya” about new “standards” for micro content and structured blogging and the announcement about i-tags. There is an impending “identity powder keg” that could go off this week in Califorina (and across the country) with the pending execution of Tookie Williams on Tuesday December 13th.
I googled – “Identity” and “Tookie” some interesting articles came up. They get to the heart of one element of ‘identity’ to have a meaningful place in a socio-cultural context. To be seen by others (afterall identity is what others say about us).
From Black News.com:
In a candid, and revealing moment, Stanley “Tookie” Williams told a visitor at San Quentin prison that he helped found the notorious Crips street gang because he wanted to smash everyone, make a rep, get respect and dignity, and that he wanted his name to be known everywhere. He got his wish in more ways than he ever dreamed of. The demons that drove Williams in his reckless push for identity and prominence also drove him to become the nation’s best known condemned prisoner. He faces execution December 13 for multiple murders.
William’s revelatory glimpse into his thug past tells much about the anger, alienation, and desperation that have turned legions of young black men into social pariahs, and that propel them to wreak murder and mayhem in mostly poor, black communities. But today’s Tookies didn’t crop up from nowhere. The transformation in the early 1970s of the old-line civil rights groups into business, and professional friendly organizations, and black middle-class flight from the inner city neighborhoods, left the black poor, especially young black males, socially fragmented, politically rudderless, and economically destitute. Lacking visible role models of success and achievement, and competitive technical skills and professional training to compete in a rapidly shifting economy, they were shoved even further to the outer margins of American society.
Jamie Lewis is giving a great talk here at his conference on User-Centrism Meets Polycentrism: Creating Identity Infrastructure for the Internet. One of the things that he mentioned was Identity Commons and my representation of that ecology here at the conference.
He also highlighted the fact that reputation systems have a role to play. I have been working as the Blogosphere Advisor to a start up working on OPEN REPUTATION SERVICES – Opinity. They have a blog too.
One of my new friends in the industry who is a Service Integrator (SI) working on massive enterprise integration projects thought that the talk likely went over the majority of the audience’s head.
This whole set of issues around DNS, ICANN and the US Commerce Department that came out at the end of June is relevant for us identity folk do reflect upon given the upcoming discussions about governance of the identity layer.
Listening and watching Doc’s slide show at Syndicate. It is great. One of the challenges he highlights is “Language” as a challenge in describing the new new media…
Cognitive Linguistics 101
we talk about things in the terms of other things
The REAL Matrix is the set of concepts we use to make sense of the world. We are not conscious of them. But they do our thinking and talking for us.
The Real Matrix is metaphors we talk about everything in terms of other things. We literally borrow whole vocabularies. Unconsiously.
Every Metaphor is a box of borrowed words – Concepts that frame our understanding.
Time is Money – we waste it save it spend it invest it lose it and set it aside
Life is Travel – Birth is arrival. Death is departure. Choices are crossroads and careers are paths.
What do we understand the NET in terms of …
Define broadcasting as transporting content. Not as speech.
Broadcast moves content through media. Speech happens in place.
There’s a fight going on between metaphors on the Net and the Web
- We “move” “content” through a “medium” with a “transport” protocol. So, it’s about shipping.
- We “architect,” “design,” “construct” and “build” “sites” with “addresses” and “locations” with “traffic.” So, its about real estate.
- We “write” or author” “pages and “files” of “writing that we “browse.” So, its about writing.
- We “perform” for an “audience” that has an “experience.” So it’s about theater.
The FCC does not currently view the net as a place. It sees it as a broadcasting and communications infrastructure that they should regulate. See this post…
Speech informs. It is not about delivering content. The difference is critical – information is a commodity – it is derived from the verb to inform. Which is derived from the verb to form. Meaning that we actually form each other. We are changed by what we learn from each other. Authority is the right we give each other to form and shape what we know. Much of what happens on the net is sharing and improving ideas. This is how syndication happens and how new standards and practices grow in Blogging, podcasting, tags, identity and much more…
IDENTITY GANG is highlighted as an example of the snowball that can emerge out of conversations and how snowballs form.
Doc shows us the reason internet radio was killed – government regulation. This is the kind of government regulation that drives CATO and company crazy…I am beginning to see the reason they are anti-regulation – highly complex, requires teams of lawyers to discern and ‘follow’ correctly.
How do we use language in the identity space? How can be be more conscious of the language we are choosing to use? I hope that next ID Gang and at Catalyst we can have a few deep conversations on this. It also relates to policy usability. The terms we use to describe identity sharing policies must use appropriate language (metaphor) to describe what is going on.
Kaliya's the shit. Be there or be square.Enlighten yourself through her