These words were inspired by reading On Freedom by Timothy Snyder and participating in the discussion around the revised principles of SSI. The intention is to present an alternative, thought-provoking frame to think through identity and sovereignty in digital environments. Enjoy :)

What do we actually mean by Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI)?

Why is it so important to design systems that follow the principles of SSI?

One framing I have found useful recently is sovereignty over our digital selves.

That is, the principles of SSI are really principles for designing systems that enable and empower individuals to be sovereign over their digital selves.

This framing redirects our attention away from identity and towards sovereignty and the digital self.

Of course this raises questions: What is sovereignty? What is a digital self? Where are our digital bodies?

Let me try and address them in turn.

What is sovereignty and what does it mean to be sovereign?

Sovereignty is our ability to reason about the world and our capabilities and constraints for action within it. It is our ability to perceive and explore possibilities, to select actions from within this possibility space using values-based judgments with an orientation towards the future. And in doing so learn more about ourselves and the world we inhabit.

Human sovereignty is located in the living human body, the interface that mediates the self’s subjective experience of external reality. It is through this mediated experience we are brought into relation with our environment and the other beings that inhabit it. The body helps us recognise and acknowledge our shared existence as we try to see the world and ourselves through the eyes of others.

It is through the body that we discover, explore and struggle against the constraints of our environment and our capacity for action within it. Over time becoming increasingly capable, increasingly sovereign, increasingly free.

However, we can all recognise that nobody is born free, sovereign or capable. Rather, we are utterly dependent on the care, love and attention of others to raise us as capable, sovereign individuals. To teach us our capabilities and help us understand our limitations. To introduce us to and help us orient ourselves within a world of values.

While the body mediates our experience of reality, it is our memories that place us in time and uniquely locate us within a world of values. In doing so, both the past and the future are made present, colouring and structuring our experience and the possibilities we perceive and judge for action within the present.

We have all been sculpted by different pasts, both those we have lived experience of and those we find ourselves socially situated within. These threads and roots into our past show up unpredictably, providing a frame of reference through which we make sense of the present and chart pathways towards desired futures.

To be sovereign does not mean to be free from all constraints and responsibilities over the activities one engages in. Rather, it is to be entangled, and to entangle others, in a web of accountabilities that regulate and coordinate shared activity.

To be sovereign is to be capable of reasoning about the activities we engage in, the accountabilities they entangle and the anticipated futures they may bring about.

Why is sovereignty an important property?

Sovereignty is important if we want to live in freedom and participate in free, lively, dynamic societies that are open to possibility, change and the unpredictability of the future. It is the foundation upon which freedom is built and sustained.

Sovereign individuals capable of making informed, values-based decisions from their own unique vantage point animate and enliven free societies. Societies in which individuals are not free from constraints, but free to reason about constraints and how to use them to their advantage. Societies where individuals are free to live their lives according to the values they judge important at any given moment and pursue the futures they find meaningful. Sovereign individuals are capable of this.

It is the unpredictable actions of sovereign individuals that drive change in our world.

A free society is a society that recognises the value of values and the creative potential these differences in values generates.

Societies that raise sovereign individuals open themselves and their futures to possibility. To the discovery of new values to live by and new capabilities to act through. They acknowledge the inherent unpredictability of the future and raise individuals capable of navigating these waters, trusting them to go out into the world and chart their own course.

The alternative is societies that close themselves off to the future by denying its unpredictability and limiting its potential. Such societies are distrustful of unpredictable, sovereign individuals preferring instead to render individuals as predictable objects to be nudged and corralled into ever more probable states. Controllable, conformant individuals, that no longer think for themselves, no longer take responsibility for their actions and the futures they bring about.

This leads to a deadening of our world. A flattening of our possibility space. A hollowing out of meaning.

I know which world I would rather live in.

We must resist the desire of others to make us more predictable.

We must resist the temptation to render others we meet as predictable objects.

Instead, let us aspire to inhabit our own rugged borderland of unpredictability1 and create invitations and pathways for others to step into theirs.

Let us help and encourage each other to be increasingly sovereign over our selves.

What is a digital self?

First, what is a self?

Without attempting any kind of scientific definition here. A self is something that animates a body inhabiting an environment. The body mediates the self’s experience of external reality. A self is the internal processes of life. A self simulates and understands itself, its identity, its environment and the other embodied selves it encounters within it. A self attempts to make sense of reality. A self enacts this reality, imbuing it with ever shifting worlds of meanings.

A self is the fuzzy, undefinable process that is capable of becoming sovereign over the body they inhabit and the space-time-value continuum they navigate.

A digital self is a self that inhabits digital environments. That attempts to make sense of these digital environments and the constraints and capabilities for action within it.

Digital environments do not have the same rules and laws as physical ones. But they are environments and we do inhabit them all the same.

Our physical devices create portals that displace us from our bodies and transport us into digital realms.

We are not native to these worlds. We arrive into them as naked and helpless as a newborn baby.

However, in these worlds there is no one to mother us. No one to protect, nurture and care for us. No one to teach us how to navigate this hostile, alien environment. No one to help us grow into digitally sovereign, capable individuals.

Instead, it is the wild west and we are expected to fend for ourselves.

We find ourselves in a situation akin to lab rats with our experimenters given godlike powers over the properties and rules of our environment. Through their experiments they seek to understand us, to predictify us and to control us.

Digital identity systems, all too often are systems given to us by those same experimenters seeking to track and render our behaviour in ever greater fidelity.

And while the digital worlds are distinct from our physical reality, they are deeply entangled. It is disembodied humans that animate digital selves. Embodied humans moving through space, time and among values.

The predictification2 of our selves in digital environments reverberates through these other dimensions. Our sovereignty over our human bodies is compromised. No longer are we unpredictable, richly textured, embodied living beings pursuing our own values and dreams of futures but flattened predictable objects dancing to someone else’s tune.

Where are our digital bodies?

So far I have argued that selves can become sovereign over their bodies and through their bodies their mediated capability for action in the world.

If we accept that our selves inhabit digital environments and move through digital worlds, one question that arises is this: where is the body that separates the internal digital self from its external digital reality. The interface that mediates the self’s experience of the digital realm. The vessel that constrains and enables the self’s capacity for action in digital worlds.

Why is this a useful frame?

It helps us recognise what we do not have today, while also drawing attention to the fundamental limitations and differences of digital worlds and the bodies that can inhabit them.

These are artificial environments that operate under different, often opaque rules.

A digital body is not a human body.

While digital bodies are primarily animated by human selves, such bodies are not restricted in the way human bodies are.

We all know and have deep experience of the fact that our physical bodies are our own.

Only one self controls and can be held accountable for the actions of a human body. Although many may and do attempt to influence and control the self, the meanings it makes of the world and the actions it takes.

An embodied human moving through space and time has the capacity to make sense of its environment and the other beings it encounters within it. The physical environment and the capabilities of others within it can be reasoned about with a degree of confidence. With the reasonable expectation that these properties will persist in the future.

The reality of digital realms and activities mediated across digital technologies is that we can never know with certainty the human being animating this activity. This is the uncanny gap that separates physical and digital realities. The uncertainty that can never wholly be overcome.

This is a constraint that we would do well to understand and work with, rather than ignore or convince ourselves that it does not exist.

I do not have all the answers here. I am just suggesting that the analogy of a digital body may provide a different, interesting lens to think through these challenges.

It implies that there is some private, inviolable internal realm and a border across which the experience of a digital reality is mediated. It suggests that the body should be capable of moving as a constancy through time and in digital space. Bodies can be observed, but they can also often know and reason about who or what is observing them. Embodied selves can act with the intention of effecting change in the world and can reason about the affects their actions may have on themselves and others.

Identities are applied to bodies as they are observed over time, layering on meanings through which an identified body’s actions are interpreted and understood. In digital worlds, the system is both the environment we inhabit and an observer of our interactions. These systems cannot give us identity, but they do form their own understandings of us, and if we are not careful, these can become the dominant identities through which we understand ourselves.

The other aspect of digital bodies I find to be thought provoking is what constrains its capacity for action. Today, in the majority of environments and systems in which “users” act, the constraints over these actions are arbitrary and unevenly enforced at the whims of those with asymmetric power over the environment and the users that it graciously allows access to. These are environments that do not support the application of reason.

The capabilities of bodies are defined by their constraints within an environment. Constraints that can be discovered, used and struggled against. Constraints that are enforced consistently and unfeelingly, without caveats or exception.

What if digital environments exhibited these properties?

I want to inhabit digital worlds whose environments are composed of substrates whose rules are knowable, can be reasoned about and can be struggled against. Can be challenged and changed. With the possibility for change itself, something that can be subject to reason.

We need a new physics for these digital worlds, one in which cryptography provides the atomic building blocks upon which digital facts can be established and digital truth is grounded.

What if instead of focusing on how we design identity, we focus on designing the conditions for individuals to become increasingly sovereign over their digital selves? Identity is what emerges from the interactions of these selves across space, time and among values. It is the name we give for the sense an observer makes of a self. It is not something that can be designed, issued or provided.

Instead, we should focus on designing systems that empower individuals with the capabilities to show up in digital environments as a constancy, make sense of that environment, the rules under which it operates and the others that we encounter within it.

Individuals capable of being sovereign over their digital selves.

2

This is a beautiful phrase used throughout Timothy Snyder’s On Freedom. The individually perceived and inhabited human space between what is and what should be. This is the zone of freedom.

Remixing ideas from On Freedom by Timothy Snyder that resonate strongly with my work on identity systems and the imperative for sovereignty over our digital selves, as we are recognised, remembered and responded to within the digital realms we inhabit.

I have more words to come, but I have been struggling to pull the threads together into something coherent. I wanted to get something out, and this feels worth saying.

Unpredictability is rarely discussed.

Rarely acknowledged as desirable.

And yet.

Our capacity for unpredictable action is what enlivens our world.

We should embrace it. Celebrate it. Strive for it.

We must resist predicification. The rendering of our selves as predictable objects that can be nudged and steered towards ever more probable states.

See predictification for what it is, a mechanism of control by those who would seek to direct our activities towards purposes that are not our own.

Instead, let us strive to freely inhabit and orient ourselves within our own unique world of values.

Drawing on the lessons of our lived experience to make value based judgements in the present moment as we make choices about the action to select from the possibilities we uniquely perceive.

Through these choices, through these actions, we affirm what we believe is good in the world and work to sustain and amplify it in the future.

Unpredictability is a feature, not a bug.

We were all shaped by different pasts, both directly experienced and socially embedded within.

We all embody and enact different values.

We all desire different futures.

The past and the future are made present through the colouring and structuring of human experience. They provide a lens and frame through which to translate and interpret the bodies mediated sense of reality at any given moment.

The meanings we make from it. The possibilities we perceive in it.

How could this be anything other than unpredictable.

That is even before you consider the environment we humans inhabit and experience. Or the other, equally unpredictable others they encounter within it.

As humans discover, explore and overcome the constraints of their environment.

As we recognise the existence of others and see both the world and themselves through the imagined experience of the other.

As we attempt to establish, confirm and maintain a shared, intersubjective experience in order to coordinate joint activity.

We discover new possibilities. Learn new capabilities.

We question our values. And challenge theirs.

This is the unceasing process of becoming that all humans participate in.

The choices that we make. The actions that we take. Intending to affect the future.

Improbable and unpredictable.

They have effect on the world and on the others that inhabit it. They change them. And change ourselves.

And in doing so they ripple out into the future, illuminating, expanding and constraining possibility spaces for unpredictable activity.

The sheer complexity of these possibility spaces are indescribable and unimaginable.

Life in all its beauty.

However, today, we find ourselves at a strange place.

On the one hand, our capacities for acting with effect on the world are exponentially increasing. Through our technology, we have been able to extend our bodies, amplify our capabilities and exert ever more influence over reality.

On the other hand, our technologies, our machines have rendered us ever more predictable. Ever more controllable.

Such that the purposes we apply these newfound capabilities towards are not our own. Our actions are not oriented nor grounded within our own freely chosen values.

Our digital machines have isolated us from our bodies, exploited our reward mechanism and corralled us into socially conformant groups.

Such that many of us find ourselves living in unreality. Our biases confirmed by those we find ourselves virtually surrounded by.

We no longer make sense of the world for ourselves. No longer interact with those who cause us to question ourselves and recalibrate our values.

This is a poor world. One lacking imagination. Lacking joy. Lacking freedom.

It is a waste of the moment we find ourselves in.

So step out of the cage. Throw off the shackles you helped place around yourself.

Rejoin the world. Find your values. Discover your why.

Live your life.

Sovereign and unpredictable.

So much richness here! As I said, I hope to have more soon.

What advantages for secure coordination do artificial intelligences have over humans, specifically how might they leverage programmable cryptography to enable new coordination protocols?

Last week I joined a group of researchers, builders and thinkers at Bletchley Park to explore questions like these as part of a program discovery workshop for the Trust Everything, Everywhere opportunity space. What a setting by the way, steeped in computational and cryptographic history. At the workshop a broad spectrum of disciplines were represented: cryptography, secure hardware, robotics, AI/ML, quantum computing. It was both exciting and a little overwhelming, especially for my slow autumnal brain.

What follows is my thoughts and reflections on the workshop, program and opportunity space after a week of pondering.

What is Trust Everything, Everywhere?

Trust Everything, Everywhere is one of the opportunity spaces defined by the UK’s new Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA), think DARPA without the defense angle. ARIA’s opportunity spaces and the funding programs within them are exploring the technological frontiers of science to prepare for the coming wave of artificial intelligence and synthetic biology. Two general-purpose technologies with transformative potential and terrifying risks.

The Trust Everything, Everywhere opportunity space explores how trust can be secured, evaluated and placed in futures populated with embodied artificial intelligences.

On Trust

Trust is the social fabric that has enabled societies to scale to increasing degrees of complexity and coordinated activity. Humanity has developed and refined all manner of techniques and protocols for inducing trustworthy behavior, evaluating trustworthiness and mitigating the risk of placing trust in the untrustworthy. Redundant semi-voluntary facial expressions, locked doors, social norms, reputation networks, institutions, credentials and insurance to name a few. Through these mechanisms, humanity weaves rich webs of entanglement and accountability enabling us to place enough trust in unknown others we unavoidably encounter as we negotiate our environment and enact our lives.

Trust is placed and secured in the present. It is a judgment about whether some unpredictable other can be trusted to uphold or fulfill some expected behavior or activity in the future. This judgment is made, and trust is secured, primarily by evaluating meaningful information from the past. We aim to place trust in the trustworthy and avoid the untrustworthy. Trust is the mechanism that helps us select actions under uncertainty, and while reducing uncertainty is valuable I claim that removing it entirely is neither possible nor desirable. Uncertainty isn’t a flaw; it’s a prerequisite for emergence and complexity.

So what does this mean for the world of silicon?

What are the set of tools, protocols and systems that societies need to develop when the entities placing trust and being trusted are embodied artificial intelligences?

I look forward to seeing how the Trust Everything, Everywhere opportunity space addresses the complex multi-faceted question of trust.

On Embodiment

What does it mean for an artificial intelligence to be embodied?

To be embodied is to have one’s perception of the world mediated through a set of sensory inputs. To act with effect on the external environment and to understand the world through the embodied perception of the effects of these actions. Embodiment also means constraint. Constrained to a single location within space and time with a limited, fuzzy field of perception of the local environment. To be embodied is to be observable, both as a body moving through space and time and as a series of effects that actions have on the environment.

How will embodied AI trust their own sensory perception of the physical world?

Is it possible to simulate embodiment in virtual environments?

A recurring, thought provoking theme of the workshop.

On Games

The primary goal of the workshop was to stress test and refine the first program thesis being developed under the Trust Everything, Everywhere space. This thesis proposes exploring and pushing the limits of secure multi-agent coordination through a, still to be defined, game or competition.

The aim is to understand if, and how well, AI agents can securely reason about cryptographic protocols as they negotiate their use with other agents. Could agents identify security flaws in protocols? Can they reason about and mitigate adversarial threats? Might they be able to flexibly define, implement and execute interoperable cryptographic coordination protocols on the fly? Could they even develop novel cryptographic primitives and protocols?

So what might this game look like? What characteristics are important for it to have?

For me, the most interesting, ambitious games to instantiate would be Massively Multi-Agent Autonomous Worlds (MMAAW) - the agent equivalent to Massively Multiplayer Online games.

These games should consider the following characteristics:

• Spatio-temporal environment: Agents are located within space and time in an environment they have to navigate, explore and interact with.

• Constrained perception: Agents operate with noisy, local sensory data and have limited communication range.

• Constrained resources: Agents operate under constrained resources that they have to replenish to sustain themselves.

• Survival: Agents define themselves in relation to their environment which they are dependent on for their survival.

• Interaction: Agents can interact with the environment and other agents they encounter in the environment. Different agents might support different communication protocols / languages. Not always compatible.

• Observation: Agents understand that their actions are observable, inference-vulnerable and open to challenge. They live under the tyranny of accountability.

• Memory: Agents remember past interactions, they may be able to recognize agents they have previously encountered. The environment also “remembers” the impressions and imprints of agents as they interact with and within them.

• Cryptographic Nature: The game should contain or generate cryptographic information that agents can independently produce and verify. Provable commitments. Signed assertions. Hidden information. All should form a fabric of the world that these agents explore and coordinate over.

Then the question is, well what is the purpose of the game? How do you win?

I wonder if it is possible to create a game environment, in which intelligent artificial life seeks, discovers and generates its own worlds of meanings. As all life does. It is through the process of individuation in which life defines itself in relation to and separate from its environment that meaning is generated. What might the minimal requirements necessary to imbue artificial intelligences with this emergent, meaning generating function. Adaptive survivability here feels like a promising anchor.

What does it mean for an agent to survive, what resources do they require, can they die, can they reproduce?

How might a game environment induce the exploration and use of programmable cryptographic primitives as an adaptive strategy?

If more structured, directed goals and objectives are desired these could be introduced into the world in the form of quests and missions. For example tests to see if agents can reason about and intelligently apply a specific cryptographic protocol (e.g. private set intersection). This creates forcing functions for coordination, e.g. to start this quest you require a coalition of 10 agents. In this way, an open world could contain structured experiments of specific capabilities. However, I also wonder what might happen if agents themselves could set quests and tasks for each other.

What are the minimum initial conditions of a game required for a meaningful, lively world to emerge and be enacted by intelligent artificial agents?

On Nature’s Cryptography

Nature cryptography is another theme of the Trust Everything, Everywhere opportunity space. What new cryptographic primitives might we discover in nature, what new protocols could these unlock? Examples span the unclonability of quantum states, physically unclonable functions and the one way translation from DNA to protein.

At the time, this went largely over my head, too many disparate information mediums that I struggled to visualize where and how they might fit together.

However, in the week that has followed I have been thinking about this from a different angle. These thoughts were inspired by a presentation from Blaise Agüera y Arcas on What Is Intelligence? In this talk makes the claim:

Everything alive is a computer

Then goes on to suggest that symbiogenesis in which distinct entities merge into a more complex, cooperative whole is a regular occurrence throughout life’s evolutionary history. These symbiogenesis events are a key driver of both evolution and the emergence of intelligence.

The following questions are intentionally speculative and feel aligned with the ambition and spirit of the ARIA approach.

First, if life is a biological computer then does life have the equivalent of cryptography?

You could argue that multicellular biological life has solved secure, decentralized coordination under uncertainty.

What inspiration and analogies could we take from the natural world once we start to view life as computation and consider how life secures its information flows?

Secondly, if a primary driver for evolution and the emergence of intelligence is symbiogenesis then what are the implications for multi-agent symbiosis? How does life regulate and secure these symbiotic relationships? Can we design a game environment that enables, even encourages, multi-agent symbiotic relationships? What new intelligences might this unlock?

Finally, what might the minimal starting conditions be to produce a cryptographic biosphere where adaptive survival depends on secure coordination using programmable cryptography? What cryptographic primitives and protocols might embodied intelligences evolve under these conditions?

An Invitation

I left Bletchley Park feeling I had more to share, but struggling to articulate these ideas.

In the time that has followed the workshop, I have processed my thoughts into something I hope is coherent and useful. I present them here raw and unpolished.

Consider these words my small contribution to the emerging Trust Everything, Everywhere community and an open invitation to the conversation.

If any of these ideas resonate with you, I would love to hear from you.

The session was titled Trust in Transition and explored identity and systems of identification within the context of war, climate disasters and human migration. Critical conversations for our work at the Credentials Community Group and the wider commuity of technologists working on identity.

The humanitarian sector is a sector where systems of identification are undoubtedly and justifiably required. It is also a sector with vastly imbalanced power dynamics where vulnerable humans far from home must subject themselves to the identification systems of a state or/and a multitude of non-governmental organisations (NGOs). Additionally, the humanitarian sector is vastly under resourced and oversubscribed. Even conservatives projections into the future must accept that these challenges are only going to be further exacerbated by our collapsing climate stability, wars around the world and the terrifying rise in authoritarian regimes we see today.

Many of these NGOs were represented in the room for this session including the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC). State actors less so, although there were a few big hitters from for profit organisations in the mix.

I made a decision to attend this session because of Emry's of Caribou Digital. I have so much respect for him and the rest of the Caribou team. Throughout my PhD I read much of the research and case studies that they pushed out. In fact that research formed the backbone of one of my chapters in my thesis titled Identification Systems.

Some of their content that remains highly relevant and I that I cannot recommend highly enough are:

• The difference between digital identity, identification and ID by Johnathan Donner precisely articulates the Caribou Digital style guide for talking about identity in the digital age.

• The Identities Report, an excellent, detailed report produced by Caribou Digital as part of the Identities Project. Stories of real people, with real experiences and real challenges navigating systems of identification in the digital age. From India to the world.

These outputs, and many, many more are deep and insightful. They definitely helped to shape my thinking and perspectives of identity that continues to this day.

Anyway, I finally motivated to write these words after the latest round of responses on the CCG email thread - When Technical Standards Meet Geopolitical Reality - kicked off by Christopher Allen's call to action and concerns of the direction our community and technologies seem to be being pulled in.

I don't agree with everything Christopher is saying, but I agree with the sentiment and appreciate his voice and deep expertise in the space.

Christophers call to action kicked off a mammoth and fascinating email thread that really highlights the strengths and the heart of the Credentials Community Group. I am proud to be able to contribute to this community as one of its chairs during this time.

The whole thread is worth a read, it contains a diversity of perspectives, personal lived experiences and well-informed opinions from many of the leaders in this space.

The latest round of emails were in responses to a series of blog posts by Kyle raising serious and thoughtful concerns about the centralization of power that these technical architectures for identification enable, especially when the focus is on some authoratative issuer issuing credentials to mere holders and subjects of identification systems.

Over the weekend, after digesting Kyles words for some time Manu replied with an excellent summary.

If I had to summarize the core of your message, you're suggesting that
we have over-optimized for large government issuers and have therefore
further entrenched traditional power dynamics (that some in this
community don't like). You are saying that when we identify use cases
that we want to address, we need to focus on the power dynamics
created by the solutions. Does it shift too much power and authority
to the issuer, a guardian, the holder, or the verifier? You're
suggesting that we need to explore architectures that don't
over-optimize for the issuer, and then you used an example with age
verification where we put the decision making power in the hands of a
guardian (the parent) instead of the verifier (the website).

...

What I was thinking that you and Christopher were saying was something
along the lines of: Decentralized Identifiers are broken and we should
abandon them. Verifiable Credentials are broken and we should abandon
those too... and so on. When I think what you're saying is that we
need to reevaluate how these primitives are put together into a
functioning architecture; specifically, what credentials are issued by
whom and who depends on those -- decentralize the issuers, if
possible.

A wonderful example of how in the heat of the moment we can mistakenly infer intentions. Sometimes pausing for breath and coming back with a considered response is far more fruitful. Manu is a master of this. It is worth reading his full email response if you have the time.

So as you might see this discussion on the imbalances of power felt highly relevant to the Trust in Transition session at GDC. Imbalances in power are a fact of the fabric of the societies that we live in today, but these imbalances can, and are being, be further entrenched by information technologies. And especially information technologies designed for the purposes of recognising, remembering and responding to people and things.

Identity is powerful, just look at how it is wielded across the political spectrum.

Not only that, information technologies are disrupting and disintermediating some of the institutions whose role in society has been to trust within the systems and activity across a domain which they oversee. This is the OG (original) way societies have scaled trust to meet the demands of increasingly complex fields of social activity. I tried to write something to this effect in an earlier email response on this thread.

Anyway, I digress.

What finally tiped me into writing this piece was a response from Tim Bouma over the weekend.

Personally, I’ve come to the conclusion that we require a protocol where
the core primitive is ‘issuance’ (signing) such that there is no privileged
role of ‘issuer’ and/or ‘verifier’. Anyone using this so-called protocol,
no matter how disadvantaged they might be, must be on equal footing with
the strongest of users, namely government.
​
As things stand now, the current protocols simply reinforce the status quo,
and for the majority that’s ok, or don’t know anything differently. That’s
also ok, for the current generation of solutions, but we need to start
looking past that horizon.

This reminded me of something I wrote in my notebook towards the end of the Trust in Transition session as we turned our attention towards the futures for the humanitarian sector in relation to identity systems.

We were asked for our vision. Our aspirations.

What paths are we trying to navigate towards?

What futures are we striving to avoid?

These hooks sparked a great conversation around the room. One that, as very much a guest in this space, I was mostly happy to listen to and digest. As a wise man once told me, seek first to understand then to integrate.

I did have a vision to propose though. A vision that I attempted to articulate towards the end of the discussion. One less rooted in the current reality, more in the adjacent possible. It very much rhymes with what Tim shared on the email thread.

Simply put: SIGN ALL THE THINGS.

Individuals should be capable of being the source authority over the reality of their digital lives.

My vision is one of accountability and intersubjectivity between humans and the systems which identify them and attempt to represent some facet or fragement of their identity. Humans should be able to understand the web of accountabilities between them and the systems that what to identify them.

We have much work to go before this is a reality.

However, unlike some voices on this thread, I still have hope. We are laying the foundations, refining the primitives and exploring the building blocks and their configurations.

I firmly believe these components open up a whole new possibility space for designing, building and interacting with digital systems.

It is a possibility space we are only just starting to explore.

Sure, within that possibility space, over in some uninteresting corner, is all the same systems and approaches we know and dislike today. But that is tiny compared to what else might be possible.

I think it will take imagination, creativity and courage to bring some of these possibilities into reality.

It will also take compromise. In certain situations and sectors. The state isn't going away anytime soon. Like it or not, they are in a certain position of authority over some of the facts of our lives. In these cases we should look to gently nudge the framing, like Utah has done wonderfully.

States endorse identity, they do not issue it.

No one can issue you your identity, and if anyone trys to tell you otherwise gentle correct them and point to some facets of the multitude of identities that you contain.

That is probably enough for now.

I will close with an invitation and much encouragement to playfully explore the possibilities enabled by decentralized technologies like Decentralized Identifiers and the associated privacy-preserving cryptography primitives.

New digital realms are possible. I firmly believe this.

Through these words I reflect on what identity means to me, drawing on my understanding of the academic literature, the technological approaches to identification systems and my lived experience creating, sustaining, evolving and even shedding multiple identities over the course of my life. Through these diverse vantage points, I have developed a nuanced view of identity that I do not always see reflected in the conversations and forums I participate in. Identity is complex, necessarily and unavoidably so. While I appreciate the desire to simplify and constrain this complexity, especially when designing digital systems, doing so is simplifying and constraining the complex beings we are identifying. That is, in my opinion, at best a mistake, at worst a grievous harm.

Anyway, let me tell you how I think about identity and how I have come to view it this way.

Recently, I created Words from Wip, this Substack site you are reading now. Through this Substack I have created a common distribution channel for my words that integrates multiple of my distinct, digital presentations of self. It has been fascinating to watch the identities that have formed around these personas, these identifiers that I present my words and thoughts under, over time. To see the influence these identities have had on me as a living being navigating a course into the future. No doubt they have also influenced others who have read some of these words as they have used them to understand their author better, to model his intentions, capabilities and desires. As is only natural, human.

One question I have found myself pondering, that has been brought into sharp focus through the creation of Words from Wip, is which one of these identities is me?

Am I Snip, the first, intentionally crafted digital presentation of self and an alias I have been writing under since Kathy and I traveled around Indonesia in 2017. Snip is a kind and caring friend who appreciates good music played over fine sound systems and enjoys exploring the cultures and natural wonders of the world.

Or perhaps I am Dr Wip.

My professional, academic presentation of self in the digital realm. Itself an identity that evolved from my presentation as a young, growing software engineer curated at a now historical site - https://wip-abramson.dev.

Or am I Future Wip, my newest, most unformed, experimental presentation of self.

Creating Future Wip, really taught me a lot about crafting and wielding identities and the influence they can have over the future. This started out as a place to put a piece of writing I produced that I didn't feel belonged anywhere. Since then, I have published expressions of rage, poems of hope and love and three short, speculative fictions that imagine alternative futures. It has been delightful to watch this self take on a life of its own.

So which identity is me?

The truth is, of course, I am all of these and none of them. I contain multitudes, and while these identities I present are presented in rather high fidelity, they are not and could never encapsulate all of who I am, who I was and who I am in the process of becoming. The same is true for every single one of us.

Don't you dare try to put me in your neat little box, label me with a few measly attributes and structure my possibilities for action and interaction on the basis of this boxy, low resolution caricature you insist on calling my identity.

Identities are like a second skin. Or perhaps a cozy jacket. Or maybe it's funky.

The point is, you can put it on, you can take it off. You can even shed and discard it, burying it in the realm of the past.

Identities are also guides, they can articulate, not who we are, but who we want to be. Where we are moving towards. In the misty, magical unexplored realms of the future.

Which identities have you crafted to be your guide? What paths are you following?

Or perhaps I should ask whose? If they are not your own, you are doing it wrong.

Identity can be a superpower, it can also be a prison. I have lived both sides of that coin, I am sure most of us have.

Hopefully through of these words, and the words I distribute through Words from Wip, you can get to know me a little deeper, watch me grow and appreciate my complexity. I guarantee you this, each and every one of you reading this will know me differently. Identity is in the eye of the beholder. It emerges moment to moment at the intersection of memory and meaning within an interactive frame.

We contain multitudes. Remember that when you speak to others. Trust that they contain the same multitudes, the same vast, untapped depths as you know yourself to. Of emotion. Of empathy. Of experience.

Treat them with respect and kindness as you swim about in each other's waters.

Words from Wip is just one amalgamation of representations, of one unique human animal. Sure, it's pretty high fidelity. But it's not complete. Could it ever be?

I considered ending these words here. I mean it makes for a powerful ending. So if you are pressed for time, here is a good place to pause.

What follows, is a free flowing riff on memory and meaning. Consider this the post script. If you have the time, there are some diamonds in the rough in here.

So what is memory?

To me, memory is a string of moments, of events, meaningfully perceived through the kaleidoscope of our unique, lived experience.

This definition clarifies for me the critical importance of shared, mutually experienced moments in space and time. Places like festivals do this. Just look at Glastonbury Festival, a celebration that that has been recurring since 1970 in the same place at roughly the same moment in time (when viewed cyclically). The experiences at this festival, in this magical space, provide a constancy that bridges across time, communities and lives. It brings people together and provides them a commonality through which we can render the other as known, as human. This is immensely powerful.

Memory is transmitted in many mediums, from ephemeral words spoken in conversation, to words written and captured on paper, to the photograph and now the video recording of a moment. Memory encapsulates meaning. Or it attempts to. We remember, because something is meaningful to us. However, transmission of memory is fraught with challenges. Of course. Memory is not the moment. It is the unique, meaningful perception of a moment from the perspective of a single living being.

Every time we attempt share, record and transmit memory there is decay, bit loss and interference. In fact this occurs with a one to many effect, where the entity recording or transmitting struggles to encapsulate and convey the meanings they inferred from a experienced, remembered moment. Similarly, each entity interpreting a transmission or recording of memory, each instance of this interpretation is itself a uniquely experienced moment. Even the same human, inferring meanings from the same recording of a remembered moment, across multiple points in time will experience these moments differently, uniquely. Of course they will, we all know this from our lived experience attempting to navigate and make sense of the worlds we live in.

Humans change, moment to moment, day by day and year by year. We are in a continuous process of becoming, of seeking and also of ossifying. Navigating the tensions inherent in this dichotomy. As all life is. I wouldn't have it any other way. This uncertainty, these unknown and unknowable futures we are moving towards are what makes the magic of living magical. And yes, we should chart our course based on the experiences of the past, both individually and collectively. After all, they are the only maps we have. However, we should also recognize they are not the only maps that have existed, traveling around any of the worlds archaeological wonders will tell you that. Similarly, the maps we do have are by no means accurate and reliable navigation tools for the present moment.

Just like individual living, loving human beings, the world we live in, the societies and cultures we participate in and the technologies we have to interface with the worlds around us are all in a continuous process of becoming. They are in flux. They change. And as they do, so too do the possibilities inherent in these worlds. New actions and interactions, new ways of communicating, organizing and collaborating all become possible. And as they become possible, they become perceivable by a few brave humans with appropriately tuned perceptual lenses willing to step off the map and chart their own course into unknown and unmapped futures. Such bravery is to be applauded and commended, for it is few and far between. And can we be surprised, in a world that, at times, seems so full of hate, suspicion and division. In a world of vicious competition and horrifying wealth inequality.

Those who do step off the map to brave the unknown and who do not succumb to the pressure to conform to the paths well trodden, may, in time, convince others to journey with them. They may be able to beat down the undergrowth of uncertainty such that the way starts to seem appealing to others. Eventually, some amongst these brave adventures may start to work on maps of their own. Using language and words, they will attempt to paint the contours and texture of these newly discovered worlds of meaning. It is a truly beautiful thing to deeply appreciate the evolution of a thought collective¹ from the fringes of social acceptability into a widely accepted social phenomena. Such that, over time, we even attempt tune our children's perceptual lenses to these meanings through education².

For me, personally, cryptography is one of these awe inspiring thought collectives. Initiated into its modern conception in the 1970s by the likes of Whitfield Diffie, Martin Hellman and Ralph Merkle amongst many others. And of course we should not forget the greats who paved the way for the possibilities of cryptographic thought to be perceived. Computing greats like Ada Lovelace, Alan Turing and Claude Shannon. As well as mathematical giants like Évariste Galois and John Napier. These incredible humans ventured off piste, into the unknown, and it is because of them, and many many more who contributed and continue to sustain and evolve cryptographic thought today that we have a chance of achieving Security without Identification in the digital realm. A goal and set of requirements first articulated by another great of the world of crypgography, David Chaum³.

I digress.

You see cryptographic thought is not yet so diffused throughout society that we are attempting to tune our children's perceptual lenses to it. Maybe, hopefully even, one day. Cryptography also has the benefits of being a highly rigorous scientific discipline derived from pure mathematics. In cryptography, like most rigorous scientific disciplines, there is clear agreement on how we can disagree as well as clearly defined assumptions under which the guarantees of this cryptographic protocol or another holds true. This is the exception, not the norm. Would that the world was so simple.

Reality and our unique lived experience of it is for more messy, magical and subjective. The best we can strive for is intersubjectivity - shared understanding about the web of accountabilities that tie us together within an unfolding interaction taking place in space and time. We must also recognize that such a goal is always out of reach, always deferred, because we can never truly know another's subjectivity. The best we can do is guess, estimate and hope. However, it is important to realise that this is more than enough. If we are open, if we reach out to the other with kindness and have grace for our inevitable misunderstandings and misalignments, we can, if only for a moment, meld our minds. Together, we can weave intersubjective tapestries that are more rich, nuanced and beautiful than anything either of us could construct alone⁴.

I do find myself wondering how the technologies I am working with and shaping at the W3C and with Legendary Requirements might and could help with this. I do think they can, but it feels like we are a long ways away from this. I love Joe Andrieu's framing of identity as how you recognize, remember and respond to specific people or things. It is a great way to frame it, that directs your focus into to actionable, answerable questions you can interrogate the systems you are developing and interacting with.

For me though, intersubjectivity is also crucial. Systems of identification need to understand how they are recognizing, remembering and responding to specific people or things but also and ideally, identified individuals need to understand, intersubjectively with the system and its designers, how they are being recognized, remembered and responded to. And for what purposes. They need to be active participants in the interactions they have with these systems able to influence the way they are recognized, remembered and responded to by a system.

I think one of the ways we can move closer towards this is actually pretty simple:

SIGN ALL THE THINGS

Individuals should be capable of being the source authority over the reality of their digital lives. They should not be treated as merely dumb holders of signed credentials from "trusted" authorities, which they are required to present to other authorities in order to participate in service and get access to resources.

I do not want to live in that world.

I posit that we do not want to live in that world.

As we are seeing clearly around the world today, authorities are trustworthy until they are not. That change from trustworthy to malicious and manipulative. To authoritarian. It can happen fast. In a blink of an eye. It is happening. Now. All around us.

We need to build more robust, more resilient, more decentralized systems for all these reasons and more. Systems of identification are core to most, if not all systems that are useful to us. Useful for making sense of the complex reality we inhabit together. But the goal, the reason d'etre, is not identity, it is making shared sense of this reality so we can chart a course towards more kind, caring, compassionate futures for us all. Or if kind, caring, compassionate futures sound a bit too peace and love for you, what about charting a course to futures that more of us can thrive in.

Identity is a means to an end. We should not lose sight of this!

Let me close by sharing short poem. A wish and an aspiration I hope to push out into the world. Wise words to attempt to live by.

[1] I use thought collectives here as it was defined by Ludwick Fleck in The Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/fleck/

[2] I think there are interesting,useful analogies to be drawn with the evolution of a thought collective sustaining an idea and the evolution of a star. See Dr Wip's Tour of CERN for some more on this.

[3] A more formal(ish) analysis of the evolution and structure of cryptographic thought complete with references etc can be found in the fourth chapter of my PhD thesis.

[4] My thinking on intersubjectivity has been influenced greatly by Consequences of Language: From Primary to Enhanced Intersubjectivity, an incredible book from two researchers working deeply in the realm of language, interaction and meaning.