{"id":990,"date":"2008-06-15T09:56:58","date_gmt":"2008-06-15T17:56:58","guid":{"rendered":"\/?p=990"},"modified":"2008-06-24T10:29:38","modified_gmt":"2008-06-24T18:29:38","slug":"more-about-you-and-more-visible","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.identityblog.com\/?p=990","title":{"rendered":"Trends in what is known about us"},"content":{"rendered":"

We know how\u00a0the web feeds itself in a chain reaction powered by\u00a0the assembly and location of\u00a0information.\u00a0 We love it.\u00a0 Bringing information together that was previously compartmentalized has made it far easier to find out what is happening and avoid thinking narrowly.\u00a0 In some cases it has even changed the fundamentals of how we work and interact.\u00a0 The blogosphere identity conversation is an example of this.\u00a0 We are\u00a0able to learn from each other across the industry and adjust to evolving trends in a fluid way, rather than\u00a0“projecting” what other peoples’ thinking and motivations might be.\u00a0 In\u00a0this sense\u00a0the content of what we are doing is related to the medium through which we do it.<\/p>\n

Information accumulates power by being\u00a0put into proximity\u00a0and aggregated.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0This even\u00a0appears to be an inherent property of information itself.\u00a0 Of course information can't effect its own aggregation, but easily finds hosts who are motivated to do so:\u00a0businesses, governments, researchers, industries, libraries, data centers – and the indefatigable search engine.<\/p>\n

Some forms of\u00a0aggregation\u00a0involve\u00a0breaking down the separation between domains of facts.\u00a0 Facts are initially\u00a0discerned\u00a0within a context.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0But as\u00a0 contexts flow together and merge , the facts are visible from new perspectives.\u00a0 We can think of them as “views”.<\/p>\n

Information trends and digital identity<\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\n

How does this\u00a0fundamental tendency of information to reorganize itself relate to\u00a0digital identity?<\/p>\n

This is clearly a complicated question.\u00a0\u00a0But\u00a0it is perhaps\u00a0one of the most important questions of our time –\u00a0one that needs to\u00a0come to the attention of\u00a0students, academics, policy makers, legislators, and through them, the general public.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The answer will affect everyone.<\/p>\n

It is hard to clearly\u00a0explain and\u00a0discuss trends that are so infrastructural.\u00a0 Those of us working on these issues have concepts that apply, but the concepts don't really have satisfactory names, and just aren't crisp enough.\u00a0 We aren't ready for a wider conversation about the things we have seen.<\/p>\n

Recently\u00a0I've been trying to organize my own thinking about this through a grid expressing, on one axis,\u00a0the tendency of context to merge; and, on the other, the spectrum of data visibility<\/span>:<\/p>\n

\"Tendency<\/p>\n

The spectrum of visibility extends from a single individual on the left to everyone in the society on the right\u00a0 [if reading a text feed please check the graphic <\/a>– Kim]<\/small>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The spectrum of contextual separation extends from complete separation of information by context at the top, to complete joining of data across contexts at the bottom.<\/p>\n

I've represented the tendency of information to aggregate as the arrow leading from separation to full join, and this should be considered a dynamic tendency of the system.<\/p>\n

Where do we fit in this picture?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Now lets set up a few markers from which we can calibrate this field.\u00a0 For example, let's take what I've labelled “Today's public personas”.\u00a0 I'm talking about what we reveal about ourselves in the public realm.\u00a0 Because it's public, it's on the “Visible\u00a0to all” part of the spectrum.\u00a0 Yet for most of us, it is a relatively narrow set of information that is revealed – our names, property we own, aspects of our professional lives.\u00a0 Thus our public personas remain relatively contextual.<\/p>\n

You can imagine\u00a0variants on this – for example a\u00a0show-business personality who might be\u00a0situated further to the right\u00a0than the “public persona”, being known by more people.\u00a0 Further,\u00a0additional aspects\u00a0of\u00a0such a\u00a0person's life might be known, which would be represented by moving down towards the bottom of the quadrant (or even further).\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

I've also included a marker that represents the kind of commercial relationships encountered in\u00a0today's western society.\u00a0 Now we're on the “Visible to some” part of the\u00a0visibility spectrum.\u00a0In some cases (e.g. our dealings with lawyers), this marker would hopefully be located further to the left, indicating fewer parties to the information.\u00a0 The current location implies some overlapping of context and sharing across parties – for example, transactions visible to credit card companies, merchants, and third parties in their employ.<\/p>\n

Going forward, I'll\u00a0look at what happens as the dynamic towards data joining asserts itself in this model.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Exploring data joinging and visibility<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":68,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6,17,2,3,47],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.identityblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/990"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.identityblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.identityblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.identityblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/68"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.identityblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=990"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.identityblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/990\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.identityblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=990"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.identityblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=990"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.identityblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=990"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}