Identity on Philip Sheldrake

Reusable KYC: when a dedication to decentralization self-sabotages

Thu, 02 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Are we our own worst enemy?

Originally posted to the generative identity website .

Live or DIE — a review of a draft industry paper on the harms of SSI

Mon, 30 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Dear lawmakers and regulators, this draft industry paper doesn’t do the job. I explain why in the hope that you will act.

First published to the generative identity website .

Web3's future #fail is avoidable

Sun, 06 Nov 2022 00:00:00 +0000

The point of failure is precisely where Web3 technology meets you and me. We must change our approach, not just to avoid failure, but to fully explore and expand the gifts of being human.

First published to the generative identity website .

Digital identity is not human identity, and that matters

Thu, 14 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0000

If your work involves architecting or designing or developing or policymaking for the interweave of people and digital technologies, or researching the consequences, may I invite you to check out my new essay: Human identity — the number one challenge in computer science .

Wonderfully, I’ve been helped by thirteen reviewers offering more than two hundred questions and suggestions over six months. The work has been funded 🙏🏼 by the AKASHA Foundation , and is co-published with the brilliant Kernel community. Here’s a very quick outline …

Self-Sovereign Identity — the book, the dystopia

Wed, 26 May 2021 00:00:00 +0000

First published to the AKASHA blog .

Manning Publications has just published “Self-Sovereign Identity: Decentralized digital identity and verifiable credentials”.

[caption id=“attachment_31144” align=“aligncenter” width=“739”] ISBN-13: 978-1617296598 / ISBN-10: 1617296597[/caption]

Congratulations to the co-editors, Alex Preukschat and Drummond Reed, for getting 24 chapters, 5 appendices, and a further 11 online-only chapters out the door. No mean feat. My copy will drop on the doormat any day now.

For the uninitiated, here’s a link to the Wikipedia entry for self-sovereign identity (SSI), although it doesn’t yet reflect the caution recorded in the Internet Policy Review glossary .

Of the book’s 35 chapters, 34 explain the technologies and motivations and celebrate SSI’s application. Here is a book written almost entirely by authors with skin in the SSI game, both reputational and financial, dedicated to making sure you understand why SSI was intended to be a good thing, why exactly it is in fact a good thing, and how it will be awesome in its real-world application.

With my AKASHA Research hat firmly donned and our purpose and values front of mind, I got to write the other chapter, the only dissenting chapter. It’s one of those chapters relegated from the main book, but it is available online to all purchasers. It’s the one titled …

The deficiency of the "Generative Self-Sovereign Internet"

Wed, 13 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000

First published to the generative identity website .

Phil Windley claims that a technology stack consisting of self-sovereign identity (SSI) and related technologies has all the qualities of generativity. He does so in his latest blog post with reference to Jonathan Zittrain ’s 2006 paper The Generative Internet . It’s a well-known and well-respected reference I offered among others in 2019 on using the adjective generative in the context of identity.

Zittrain qualifies technological generativity as a function of its “capacity for leverage across a range of tasks, adaptability to a range of different tasks, ease of mastery, and accessibility.”

Phil recommends the paper in support of his argument.

I recommend the paper to counter Phil’s broader argument and to underline the purpose and value of generative identity .

The dystopia of self-sovereign identity (SSI)

Mon, 02 Nov 2020 00:00:00 +0000

SSI has distressing emergent outcomes — the antithesis of the hopes and plans of the SSI community and those attracted to SSI’s real-world application. We have to reflect and rethink.

Put starkly, many millions of people have been excluded, persecuted, and murdered with the assistance of prior identity architectures, and no other facet of information technology smashes into the human condition in quite the same way as ‘digital identity’. Therefore, if ever there’s a technological innovation for which ‘move fast and break things’ is not the best maxim, this is it. We need to move together with diligent respect for human dignity and living systems.

Developed under the auspices of the AKASHA Foundation , and first published to the Generative Identity website .

With thanks to those who commented on draft versions: Dil Green, Will Abramson, Ryan Worsley, Jakub Lanc, Brent Zundel, Andrei Sambra, Mihai Alisie. And to those who have influenced the ideas here in conversation and in their writing: Matthew Schutte, Jonathan Donner, Elizabeth Renieris, Kieron O’Hara, Martin Etzrodt, Michael Shea.