In our gathering about identities, ethics and philosophy some interesting points were discussed.
I will talk some more about certain specifics from Michiel’s notes.
For those interested in identities I would like to point out my blogpost discussing the presentation Dick Hardt gave at OSCON about Identity 2.0. This is at a very practical level and talks about identity, privacy and verifiability. The presentation is well worth watching, it is fun and it has a visionary air about it.
One interesting point was a slight redefinition of privacy (or a single facet of it) that it should not be limited to your information getting out but also to other people’s information getting in. Hearing someone else talk in your close proximity burdens you with having to process that information and therefore is a breach of your privacy.
Currently you see a lot of people reclaiming this privacy by using portable media players (iPods and such) to disconnect auditorily from the world. I do it myself in the train.
The important part of privacy is the part of moral identity. It is a person’s right to tell their own story even if it is false or vain or overly ambitious. It is the need to reduce the chance of other people making up their mind about who you are based on second hand evidence.
The —now common— practice of Googling prospective dates tells us we have already lost this one.
Bibi’s research topic on the coming irrelevance of location struck home with me. My ties to locations are pretty loose so I feel I could be anywhere as long as I have an internet connection. I already do most of my work via the internet and a lot of my friends keep in touch via MSN.
Bibi’s research is more practically oriented on ambient intelligence in locations that adapt to users’ preferences. She did not go into such futuristic domains as augmented reality where the complete notion of space becomes redefinable.
Cathy talked about Trusted Computing. This is a very difficult subject and before trusting anything the companies have to say about it, always first read what Bruce Schneier has to say about it.
Trusted computing initiatives are certainly going to be used to restrict use of some kinds of hardware and some kinds of data. They are inevitably going to decrease interoperability and annoy customers. And they will be broken within days after launch but that will only slightly reduce the pain.
Mr. Miller then talked about collective actions such as elections and how they come to an outcome using someting called a Joint Procedural Mechanism. This same mechanism applies to expert systems with computers.
Thinking about this I could not come up with other JPMs where the mechanism is purely computer based.
