Re: Principles of Identity in Web Architecture

Thanks Kingsley, I appreciate your points of view as always. All I can say
is that other disciplines, on trying to make sense of the world through
their respective disciplinary lenses, do not reach the same conclusion.
They reach conclusions that I can only consider incompatible with your
expression here. That doesn't make your conception less salient so long as
maintaining its salience doesn't require us to downplay or ignore the
salience of other disciplinary insights, especially from those disciplines
with a much longer history of grappling with the topic at hand.

As they are not here, and until somehow we might cajole everyone around the
same table, all I can do is proxy for that difference having strived myself
to become a mere student of their work.

I will try to explain one very briefly. I will take the insights of the
anthropologist and cybernetician Gregory Bateson, whose work informs
current thinking across a range of disciplines including psychology,
cognitive science, and information technology.

When you mention existence, sure enough, we can point to the existence of
my brain for example. It is a thing. It is material. I have a brain that is
unique to me. Ditto everyone else. However, my mind is not my own. If it
were, we couldn't refer to commonly held concepts using deeply ingrained
and shared symbols. Contexts matter. Contexts of contexts, and "the
patterns that connect". Right now, my mind and your mind are connected
through writing based upon symbols and contexts. A mind is no-thing. It is
entirely informational. It is shared, by definition.

"Mind is empty; it is no-thing. It exists only in its ideas, and these
again are no-things." Ceci n'est pas une pipe. "The smallest unit of mental
process is a difference, or distinction, or news of a difference." ...
which will remind you I'm sure of famous definitions of information.

Lisa Feldman Barrett's work here is described as Copernican, but for
another perspective conveniently closer to home, check out Paul Smart's The
cognitive ecology of the Internet
<https://eprints.soton.ac.uk/397486/1/cognitive_ecology_internet.pdf>
(2017).

So, how confident are we as a profession when it comes to human identity?
Some might ask, how arrogant are we?

I ask because many millions of people have been excluded, persecuted, and
murdered with the assistance of prior identity architectures, and no other
facet of information technology smashes into the human condition in quite
the same way as ‘digital identity’.

I do hope this helps in some small way. Best wishes.


On Mon, 14 Jun 2021 at 18:41, Kingsley Idehen <kidehen@openlinksw.com>
wrote:

> On 6/14/21 4:35 AM, Philip Sheldrake wrote:
>
> Thanks for the heads up Daniel (hi Amy
> <https://github.com/w3ctag/design-principles/issues/324>!) ... and I'm
> looking forward to reading your summary of this thread Melvin :-)
>
> And thank you for your reply Patrick. If I may say so, and with no
> disrespect intended whatsoever, your taking "identity" solely in the
> context of "legal identity" exemplifies the challenge I describe perfectly.
> I believe many here will understand where I'm coming from all the more for
> your contribution.
>
> Speaking only from personal experience, too many working in 'digital
> identity' (but far from all — hello again Amy!) have little idea that other
> conceptualizations of identity exist, let alone that they overlap and exist
> in a multidisciplinary attempt to better understand our world, our
> communities, and ourselves. Too few technologists then appreciate the
> corresponding ramifications of their code in this context, or even
> understand the imperative for such appreciation in the first place.
>
> Information technologists can ignore psychologists, sociologists,
> ecologists, anthropologists, experts in cultural studies, historians,
> theologians etc. and look only to their society-coding cousins — the law
> profession — for design inspiration. They can ignore the fact that their
> code is potentially far more insidious than the code of their lawyerly
> colleagues. But they can only do so by also ignoring the ethical
> requirements laid out by their respective professional bodies.
>
> Kind regards.
>
>
> Hi Philip,
>
> There is only one of "You" in existence, as far as we currently understand
> the world.
>
> There are many identifiers associated with "You" that originate from a
> variety of sources, many of which you have no control (or partial control)
> over.
>
> Those identifiers that you control can be the basis for accurate "sameAs"
> assertions by you about yourself, and fuzzy assertions by others i.e.,
> third parties.
>
> Personally, the distinctions above have become unnecessarily fuzzy due to
> the power dynamics associated identity.
>
>
> Conclusion:
>
> IMHO, Identity isn't confusing. It's the dynamics created by power
> structures and business models that create and exploit confusion :)
>
>
> --
> Regards,
>
> Kingsley Idehen 
> Founder & CEO
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