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

Adding Natalie Smolenski (mentioned below) to the thread.

On Wed, May 31, 2017 at 11:06 PM Timothy Holborn <timothy.holborn@gmail.com>
wrote:

> 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
>>
>> --
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