Self-Sovereign Identity — the book, the dystopia

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

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 …

Alex-Preukschat on Philip Sheldrake

Self-Sovereign Identity — the book, the dystopia