Re: Credentials CG Telecon Minutes for 2015-08-04

On 8/4/15 12:38 PM, Dave Longley wrote:
>> D. Related to the problem in C: by the end of reading the
>> Terminology, I'd become slightly disoriented about several terms --
>> how they apply to living beings as opposed to non-living beings, and
>> a vague feeling that I may have entered an infinite loop in
>> attempting to follow the connections between them.
>
> Would a "but not limited to" clause when listing examples also
> alleviate this concern?
>

Perhaps it will help, although it will be hard to be sure with me now 
that I've read and considered the document -- but it may help for 
future first time readers.

I think an example like the one you gave in "My name is Dave Longley" 
would be good to have. And perhaps several examples that take, say, 
three or four of the overlapping terms (like 'creator', 'entity' and 
'recipient'), and telling in a few words how they relate, would help 
solidify the model.

The glossary isn't the place for this, but somewhere in the Vision 
Statement might be.

I think the problem I was having might be expressed as: when setting 
up a system of inter-related abstract terms, a new reader needs places 
to anchor back to their existing (day-to-day) model of the world, or 
else the new system's terms are too fluid and have too many 
possibilities, so that it becomes like trying to solve for 10 new 
variables with only 6 equations...suddenly it doesn't seem possible to 
solve for any of them.

I'm speculating that you, as a person who has worked with these terms 
extensively, have a set of unconscious underlying connections and 
examples which are not expressed in this document but which 
nonetheless you can use to anchor yourself to the meanings of each 
term. A new reader doesn't have this and becomes lost in the wondrous 
possibility that anything can represent anything else, in language. A 
curse as well as an advantage.

> "My name
> is Dave Longley". I could create this credential for myself so I can
> share it with others via a standardized protocol. Others may elect to
> decide to trust statements I make about myself based on their
> relationship to me or based on what the statements imply -- but they
> would know that it was me who made them (I digitally signed them with
> a cryptographic key I possess). I don't see this scenario as awkward,
> yet I'm both a "creator" and a "recipient".
>
>>
>> Though if I create something I suppose I'm the recipient of it.
>
> Yes.
>
>

Received on Tuesday, 4 August 2015 20:36:45 UTC