Last week I mentioned that I had some great links to tell you about. Guess what? That rotten Jamie Lewis has scooped me and with some great postings.
First, there is LID. As Jamie puts it:
The Lightweight IDentity (LID) spec joins SxIP and XRI/XDI in attempting to create systems that empower individuals to manage their digital identity. It uses URLs to point to identity information. It's an update of sorts of the vCard concept and allows users to publish (self-assert) identity info.
According to the LID site, LID is built on:
- VCards (actually the XML version of VCards currently maintained by the Jabber Software Foundation) for information about yourself;
- FOAF (friend-of-a-friend) for information about your social network;
- XPath to select which information to query, and which information is published to whom.
- Gnu Privacy Guard (GPG) for digital signatures.
He also points out that:
Johnannes Ernst has a blog where he talks about how LID conforms to Kim Cameron's laws of identity (more later – Kim).
Jamie then goes into considerably more depth here. He also points to an article by Shelley Powers which has to be the first concrete descrip
tion of using the emerging identity systems – she concentrates on LID and SXIP, with some mentions of I-names and Liberty. I love stuff like this – and hope there will be a lot more of it. Shelley has a lot of energy going here. So I want to forgive her if there is a certain “biff! boom! bah!” in her punch – like when she lands one on me.
She's a ‘bit rough’ on Liberty, which after all has done pioneering work which all of us would like to see expressed in the emerging “mega meta momma backplane”. But I have to admit I was also taken aback when I first read the scenario doc she describes:
Case in point, from the specification there is a possible user scenario, with Joe Self logging on to an airline, who is part of a circle of trust. Once authenticated, in the scenario, Joe is then asked:
Note: You may federate your Airlines, Inc. identity with any other identities you may have with members of our affinity group.
Do you consent to such introductions?
Laughable. I chortled until tears ran down my face. It then continued on from there, with Joe Self being asked to ‘federate his identity’ at various sites within the ‘afinity group’ as he progressed along, just trying to reserve an airline ticket and rent a car – something that can be done in one move, with one click of the button in today’s travel systems.
I think we all know the authors must have meant this as a placeholder – meaning “more research to be done on user metaphor”. But I was wincing when I first read it too – only because I know how difficult these issues are. Anyway, I'll be getting to the issues at play here when I present my 6th law.
Finally there is Shelley's comment on my work on this blog:
I never touch ‘Laws’ as defined by a person or persons with vested interest, regardless of how good they sound.
Fair enough. But I can't imagine anyone who doesn't have some vested interest in what they do. Unconscious motivations are the worst – because you can't take them into account or compensate for them.
I do believe the laws we are discussing here operate equally in everyone's interest. They lead us all toward the identity big bang – a new era of software which is identity-aware. Sure, Microsoft will benefit from that big-time. But so will every thinker, inventor, developer and citizen on the planet, and all the companies, universities and governments with whom they are associated.
