Stream of Consciousness

When you log into a community site, say LinkedIn or Tribe, you provide them with information about you which they now control. This is unfortunate because 1) if you want to log into another site, you have to enter similar information again (if you belong to more than one social networking site, you know what I mean!) and 2) if (say) your email address changes, you’ve got to go and change it at every place you gave it to, or else risk missing the messages that you signed up for (which is bad for both parties!).

User-centric identity enables you to be the master of your online digital identity. Once you have that control, the tables turn and instead of giving other sites your data (which can rapidly become obsolete) you instead give them permission to access certain parts of your personally maintained data. As long as you give them access to e.g. your email address, any time that you change it (in just one place) all the sites that have “subscribed” to your email address will get updated. Further, as you build depth as (say) LinkedIn and later want to bring some of your “reputation” over to Tribe, it’s as easy as giving them the right to view whatever portions of your “profile” you choose. And in case you’re wondering, there are some simple procedures, a developing set of “identity rights agreements” (similar in concept to the Creative Commons copyrights) and some fancy mathematical proofs that enable you to protect your privacy and security while doing all this - far better than it is protected now by all those sites storing it “for you”.

But I said above “coming soon to Drupal” and what I really meant was “coming soon to a community near you,” and Drupal just happens to be one of the more common community building tools. A recent announcement from OpenID caught my eye:

From http://iwantmyopenid.org/bounty (Digg it):

In an effort to raise the awareness and increase adoption of OpenID, we are proud to announce the OpenID Code Bounty.

$5,000 USD will be donated to the first ten software projects that meet the requirements of the bounty program. Currently the OpenID Code Bounty is being sponsored by VeriSign, JanRain, Cordance, ooTao, Four Kitchen Studios, Zooomr, claimID, NetMesh, Opinity, Six Apart, Sxip, Zp3, and the International Webmasters Association.

OpenID already uses XRI for discovery; the next step is to get the input form to accept either an OpenID URL or an XRI-based i-name. Turns out that appendix C-1 of OpenID Authentication 2.0 - Draft 5 says that is will do exactly that, and the good folk at JanRain are already working on it. Once there’s an 2.0-enabled OpenID Drupal module you can bet I’ll be incorporating it into CivicActions sites wherever possible.

I came across this today, and really enjoyed it: 95 Theses of Geek Activism.

Perhaps it helps that I identify as a hacker in the manner described in the first thesis. Geek Activism is really all about being smart, thinking for yourself and not simply accepting what others say just because they happen to be on TV or run the corporations or government (the differences between these are fading).

Read them. Follow the links. You’ll learn a little bit more about me - and maybe a little bit more about yourself, too. I’ll end with a quote that comes to mind, perhaps because activists are geeks, too (though they may not know it).

People single me out for being an activist, but I always say that the impulse is inborn - it just needs to be nurtured. It starts when you’re little, and you see some kids being unkind to another kid on the bus. Maybe you do something. Maybe you don’t. But there was that little hint in your brain that something was wrong, that you weren’t comfortable with the situation.

Throughout your life, you have the opportunity to learn from that experience, to react to that little voice inside of you that says something has crossed your moral bottom line, to ignore what others are telling you to do and honor your impulse. The very core of being an activist is being true to yourself.

— Susan Sarandon