Day: January 25, 2005

Craig Burton has been turning up the volume recently. His recent comment on the sixth law struck me as “right on”:

My take on this law is that Kim is proposing an identity system that transcends the boundaries that we normally think about when considering any service-based system. According to the sixth law, it needs to include both the channel of communications between two machines and between the user and machine. In essence a dual channel identity sytem.

A dual channel identity system is over the top. It is hard to think about let alone concieve and create.

Yes, it is hard. It's hard to conceive what it means. And it is hard to create. But if we want to get to the identity Big Bang, we have to go for it. I mean as an industry.

Craig continues:

Now I am also really curious on how this system will actually work. It would be tough enough to be a dual channel system in a single environment. But proposing that this system be cross-platform (see law number five) is almost too much. The technical and political issues to be overcome with this 7-point-system seem overwhelming. I have concerns about how all this is going to happen. But my concerns are probably unfounded.

Yeah. That's what makes this exciting.

I have long been fascinated by the way information technology is distorted by the economics governing its dissemination and commoditization. For example, I think our concepts of digital identity are profoundly affected by the fact that the mainframe era, in which organizations could afford computers while individuals couldn't, preceded the era of personal computers. The result was that the initial paradigms of digital identity (which permeated the thinking both of organizations and of individuals) emanated from the point of view of the organization, not the individual. It will take… a while… to reach a “recalibration” – in which there is a more balanced relationship between individual and organizational identity.

William Heath reports a fascinating example of potential recalibration of technology relations between customer and commercial entities:

Tom S points out a new service which might further help restore the balance of power between Winston Smith and the forces of darkness….it's called Registered Call. The founder, David Hume, says

Six months ago I launched Registered Call Ltd, a call recording service and
an online Consumer Complaints Resolution Mechanisms (CCRM) developed
primarily to assist consumers experiencing redress difficulties: Users dial
an access number and then, when prompted, the number they want to call. A
message notifies the called party the call is being recorded.
Users can later access their recording from the website and unite with
others who dial the same number.

I feel this service could be offered as an open source middleware technology
to all intermediaries within the consumer feedback/complaints industry…

Sounds pretty cool. Could Registered Call bridge the “digital divide” issue which UKFeedback will inevitably face? Is it appropriate to use direct recordings of calls to prove service quality points in a constructive way that leads to change?

Quite probably.