Re: First pass at CG naming goals and restrictions google doc

I will review the above (with thanks) and get back to you asap.

FYI also: http://standards.ieee.org/news/2017/digital_inclusion.html

Tim.h.


On Thu., 1 Jun. 2017, 3:58 pm Christopher Allen, <
ChristopherA@blockstream.com> wrote:

> I worked very hard reviewing various terminology alternatives before
> deciding to use the term “self-sovereign identity” for our technology — I
> wrote about the decision process as well about 10 initial principles of
> self-sovereign identity at
> http://www.lifewithalacrity.com/2016/04/the-path-to-self-soverereign-identity.html
> which was also republished by Coindesk.
>
> A key point about the choice of the word “sovereign” is that in the legal
> history of the term, sovereign always has edges — a nation is sovereign to
> its borders, but not further. For individuals, “the right to swing your arm
> ends just where the other man’s nose begins” is also a very old concept.
> (That, and some other choice quotes is at
> https://www.slideshare.net/ChristopherA/collection-of-economic-freedom-quotes-curated-by-christopher-allen
> ) Natalie Smolenski wrote about this a bit in
> https://medium.com/learning-machine-blog/identity-and-digital-self-sovereignty-1f3faab7d9e3
> where she talks about sovereignty on the high seas. I personally believe we
> currently are in a major historical age of renegotiation of what
> sovereignty means — in the past this has been from war leaders to barons,
> barons to feudalism, cities to nations, multi-nationals, toward today where
> everything is being re-thought (EU -> Brexit -> Scottish Independence ->
> Gloucester’s worries about Edinburgh is a great example).
>
> The biggest objection to the term was that there are some conservative
> protesters and kooks that object to the sovereignty of nation states
> entirely, which is called the “sovereign citizen movement” ( see
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_citizen_movement ) — the
> arguments against that particular corruption of the word were compelling,
> however, in the end I decided, partly on the basis of the suggestion in a
> podcast by a professional comic that said lean into the emotions of words,
> to use “self-sovereign identity”. This proved to work quite well, starting
> at the ID2020 conference at the United Nations, where they were quite
> compelled by the name because in the UN’s POV, identity is a human right,
> not a nation-state process. Today google reports that are over 11,000
> references to the phrase “self-sovereign identity”.
>
> Some of the better links:
>
>
> http://www.lifewithalacrity.com/2016/04/the-path-to-self-soverereign-identity.html
>
> https://bitsonblocks.net/2017/05/17/a-gentle-introduction-to-self-sovereign-identity/
> http://www.windley.com/archives/2016/08/an_internet_for_identity.shtml
>
> https://medium.com/learning-machine-blog/identity-and-digital-self-sovereignty-1f3faab7d9e3
> http://www.windley.com/archives/2016/10/on_sovereignty.shtml
>
> https://github.com/jandrieu/rebooting-the-web-of-trust-fall2016/raw/master/topics-and-advance-readings/a-technology-free-definition-of-self-sovereign-identity.pdf
>
> http://www.windley.com/archives/2016/05/why_companies_need_self-sovereign_identity.shtml
>
> http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/doing-user-space-what-we-did-kernel-space
>
> https://www.sovrin.org/The%20Inevitable%20Rise%20of%20Self-Sovereign%20Identity.pdf
> http://essay.utwente.nl/71274/1/Baars_MA_BMS.pdf
>
> http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/self-sovereign-identity-cornerstone-blockchain-internet-1609550
>
> https://github.com/WebOfTrustInfo/self-sovereign-identity/blob/master/Schutte-on-SSI.md
>
> There are many other terms in the past (see my original article) but my
> hope is that self-sovereign is less corruptible than terms like
> “user-centric identity” were in the past.
>
> — Christopher Allen
>
>