The Adventures of Cindy Li

Web2.0:Power to the People via User-centric Identity

April 16 , 2007

Once upon a time

Kaliya Hamlin, presented about Privacy on the web. Identity on the web, books exist on the bookshelf. Second order storage there is a card catalog that we can look up. Now we have third order now the books, the data, the meta are both virtual. Our bodies can only be present but on the web we can exist and extending our presence out in the digital realm. The question is how do we move about in the digital realm. This matters, how we tag, how we order, and digest our relationships.

We extend ourselves in this digital realm. New things happen in our identities. What we like, what we do. It raises privacy concerns. It is easy to ping a data cloud and find out information about yourself. Your habits. Where you have surfed. It is good for us but people can use it for bad. We put our inner thoughts. We’re covered in online video. Andy Warhol said we can be famous for 15 mins but he didn’t say how. In the real world you would have shown up in the local paper. Now all those little bits are expressed online. It is by and about us.

For all this to work we need human friendly metaphors.These are critical to identities to trust. These new identities must protect users by larger web 2.0 communities. Web 2.0 will only work if people trust the web and trust it enough to use it. There is a huge growing problem on the web with identity. A trusted place. When the internet was created it was a small community where everyone knew each other. There is a new challenge and a new opportunity. It offers new ways to reweave trust on the web using the communities of web 2.0.

Identity on the web?

What we have is an identity commons community for key building blocks. What can we do to make it happen? Openid architecture.
Vendor relationships?

I can’t take my mailing list for the last 10 years and show up in a social context.
Why and how do we trust? Do I trust your gov’t papers and see who we trust? The bank, passport control? Who do we trust with past interactions? We make it in our past experiences.
I trust my friend Sally because we’ve done things together. I trust Bill because she trusts him.

I dont’ know Jane but says Suzie says Jane was a good person to talk to. Each of us in our communities. We have our own needs for trust. We have our own ways and needs for trust. It is based on our own definitions. Science is starting to unpack our minds. The question we ask ourselves today how do we trust?  How do we as an evolving culture evolve? Emotional maturity to overcome the hurdles? 5 star ratings? Instead of technologies and platforms. Must be usercentric.It must be rooted in context.

Where do we start?

Are you building in Openid? Please do it. Where I see us going is really how group identities should be supported in a living web. The web 2.0 if you will.
Wikipedia possible and learning about today is what kind of new engines provide us to improve web 2.0 to create a trust?