- From: Manu Sporny <msporny@digitalbazaar.com>
- Date: Mon, 22 Mar 2021 09:29:31 -0400
- To: public-credentials@w3.org
On 3/21/21 11:57 PM, Adrian Gropper wrote: > Are we, as a community, being shy in using self-sovereign to describe our > perspective? My response below is for people that feel like the question above has an easy answer. I expect the following to be misconstrued or quoted out of context, which is sad, but here goes; everything below is said without any value judgements. Remember that not all nations and people of the world view "self-sovereign" as a purely positive thing. I'm not shy about using it, just very careful, and tend to avoid it as it tends to distract focused conversations. To speak to at least three overly-broad categories, self-sovereign is not viewed as an entirely positive thing among: 1. Authoritarian-leaning groups. 2. Non-authoritarian sovereign governments. 3. Non-western societies where the importance of the individual is not placed above the importance of the community. I don't think that anyone is here to support #1 above. #2 and #3 are why I tend to be careful about using the word "self-sovereign". It's useful when speaking to others that understand the nuance. It can be thoroughly confusing or shut down conversations with those that don't... and even when educated about the nuances, the message doesn't land well with the latter two groups. I end up doing far more damage control when the word "self-sovereign" is included than if I just stick to "verifiable credentials and decentralized identifiers". -- manu -- Manu Sporny - https://www.linkedin.com/in/manusporny/ Founder/CEO - Digital Bazaar, Inc. blog: Veres One Decentralized Identifier Blockchain Launches https://tinyurl.com/veres-one-launches
Received on Monday, 22 March 2021 13:29:47 UTC