Day: February 10, 2005

The Seventh Law of Identity — Overnamed

I'm happy to go with Craig and P.T. about the name of the seventh law. After all, who can argue with this posting from Craig Burton:

Kim put forth the seventh — and final — law of identity Sunday:

The Law of Harmonious Contextual Autonomy

Kim, my man, the length and complexity of this name is too much. I want to be able to remember the laws easily and to use them as needed. The name you chose makes this objective impossible. I know you are dealing with complicated issues here, but please consider taking another cut at it. How about just “The Law of Contexts”? Something shorter and easier to remember, please.

Why was I trying to cram so much into the title? I don't know. I was running out of laws. It was a terrible feeling. What could I do?

Anyway, I squeezed too hard. And now I will make amends. I'm so glad we have a blog here and we can do all of this in real time. It is a great way to work.

So let's go with your much simpler and superior title for the Seventh Law:

The Law of Contexts:

The unifying identity metasystem MUST facilitate negotiation between a relying party and user of a specific identity – presenting a harmonious human and technical interface while permitting the autonomy of identity in different contexts.

I think it's a take.

How Hot is Cool?

Bill Barnes, who is the UI guru in new ways to “reify” identity here in the Identity and Access group at Microsoft, sent me this sobering thought about Craig‘s “sunspot-hot” comment:

I thought sunspots were actually cool spots on the sun

But of course, everything is relative:

Fisher says sunspots are still quite hot: “Instead of being about 5800 degrees Kelvin like the rest of the photosphere, the temperature of a sunspot is more like 4000 degrees Kelvin. But that is still very hot, compared to anything here on earth.”
Of course the Fifth Law transcends the earth.
Anyway, I'll get to this one day, but Bill is a very funny cartoonist as well, and is creator of a strip called “Unshelved“. He has a great sense of what identity is. And a certain firmness of approach:

P. T. Ong exhausted by 7th Law

P. T. Ong's reaction to the Seventh Law:
One quick first reaction to Kim Cameron‘s recently posted Seventh “Law” of Identity — it's too long.

7. Harmonious Contextual Autonomy: The unifying identity metasystem MUST facilitate negotiation between relying party and user of the specific identity and its associated encoding such that the unifying system presents a harmonious technical and human interface while permitting the autonomy of identity in different contexts.

Kim: You need to cut the number of words in half. It's a 41 word sentence!
Do you need to open the window, as Jamie said?
This might seem a frivolous reaction, but it is my experience that fundamental stuff can be expressed simply. If it is difficult to express simply, then it is probably not fundamental … and thus, shouldn't be a “law” or a principle. It should be broken down to it's component ideas.

I read #7 several times, and I still am having problems trying to understand it. I suspect the problem is not with the language but with the complexity of the idea.

You are totally right. I need to simplify this. Craig Burton has made the same point. I'm squeezing too hard.
As I said when writing the seventh law, the totalizing effect of the other six is that “the head explodes”. But we should be shielding the reader from this.