We said it would happen

In a story about wireless technology in The Globe and Mail (Wireless sector on verge of sea change):

In Japan, consumers can enter a barcode into their phone and comparison shop for a specific product . . .

Warren and I said to people this kind of thing would happen. They politely smiled and sipped their water. So we moved on.

Woodward's last big secret -- gone

Apparently, according to this item carried in the London Telegraph (subscription required), Ex-FBI chief: I was Deep Throat, former no. 2 at the FBI, Mark Felt, admits to feeding the Washington Post's reporters information that brought down Nixon.

Mr Felt initially denied it when confronted by his daughter but when she explained Ms La Garde's disclosure, he reportedly replied: "Since that's the case, well, yes I am."

The "Property bubble" bubble

Wow, when a delicious idea that probably affect a large tract of traditional media readership hits, things really heat up. No, I'm not talking about the overhot property market specifically pointed out by many, including Alan Greenspan. I'm referring to the barrage of media coverage itself about this situation. By example, Is Your House Overvalued? - New York Times: a new report on home prices this week suggested that he might have been understating the situation . . .; and Hear a Pop? Watch Out - New York Times.

When the general media starts heating up with expert analysis of wealth, property, and financial expertise all at the same time (like sharks in the water), better look for "a bigger boat." [That was a poor allusion to "Jaws" just to carry the metaphor. Oh well.]

Can I do it 'til I need glasses?

From the Globe & Mail: U.S. probes possible Viagra-blindness link.

U.S. health officials are examining rare reports of blindness among men using the impotence drug Viagra.

And my contractor wants it all

The Globe & Mail reports that in Canada Home renovation spending forecast to hit $41-billion.

It's no Enron, but still a movie of the week

This story in the TorStar (Could Bre-X geologist still be alive?) is making the rounds, re-igniting the disconsolation and the schadenfreude that gripped Canada about five years ago. Allegedly the geologist who became the villan when he died, may be alive.

The long and twisted saga of Bre-X Minerals Ltd. has taken another turn with reports from Asia that Michael de Guzman, the geologist who was at the centre of the gold-mining scandal, is alive and well in Brazil.

I love it when a plan comes together . . .

Seven Laws for seven brothers

Notwithstanding my initial reaction to and further comments about the Seven Laws of Identity, contained at Kim Cameron's blog, I finally took a good read through The Laws of Identity (5/19/2005 ver.). I think it is both a very well though-out attempt to codify the constraints and conditions for an identity metasystem and a damn fine piece of writing. Literate beyond the norm. All of the primary and secondary authors and contributors are to be commended for their work.

Having said that, I stand by my earlier statement (from here):

Assuming away critical system conditions to develop the mechanics may be a necessary evil at this stage, but can't continue much longer. I specifically refer to the stance taken by technology-centric solution developers that their concern is not the integrity of the identity and initial credentialing. Rather, the solution assumes proofed inputs suitable for "trust" to develop. Thus, STS or what have you can exchange credentials and tokens satisfying the mechanical aspects of questioning, presenting, and authenticating, etc. "assertions." [sic - I recognize now that the chosen description is "claims."]

Let me expand. It is without doubt that The Laws were developed from and prepared for the technical-mechanical needs of digital identity. The authors signal this framework and perspective by referring to an "identity fabric" throughout the document in reference to a loosely coupled, complex ecosystem that (begins to) satisfy the needs for identity in the digital contexts. This is supported with statements such as: "Why is it so hard to create an identity layer for the Internet? Mainly because there is little agreement on what it should be and how it should be run." (p. 2) It's a double whammy: the "identity layer" is a proxy for the digital identity system at large, and the "main" reason for its absence is the lack of agreement about mechanics. The perspective and scope of the paper is made explicit with:

we specifically did not want to denote legal or moral precepts, nor embark on a discussion of the "philosophy of identity." (p. 4)

and

Matters of trust, attribution and usefulness can then be factored out and addressed at a higher layer in the system than the mechanism for expressing digital identity itself. (p. 6)

That is a respectable limitation of scope and I have no truck with it. Others (who: me? the government? you?) will deal with such esoterica. But, it does bring me back to the quibble I noted above: there is an implicit assumption that identity validation will be done by some means beyond scope so that the technical mechanics will work. Not to belabour the point, but again the authors propose that:

. . . Our claims-based approach succeeds in this [very limited claim] regard. It permits one digital subject . . . to assert things about another digital subject without using any unique identifier.

This definition of digital identity calls upon us to separate cleanly the presentation of claims from the provability of the link to a real world object.

Our definition leaves the evaluation of the usefulness (or the truthfulness or the trustworthiness) of the claim to the relying party. (p. 6)

Don't get me wrong. Each of the Laws is individually a strong statement and collectively they represent a nice set of rules within which developers et al can be assured of weaving a good contribution to the identity fabric. I also think that the mere publication of a language, with definitions, is in itself a giant step forward. But, so long as "a set of claims by one digital subject about another" is the heart of digital identity, authentication and liability (extended to the natural logical fullness of a 1:1 mapping of physical individual to a digital "identity" -- avitar, proxy, or what-have-you -- that represents uniquely and digitally a single, real individual from which identity "facets" can be derived) will continue to cycle back and impose itself. To be sure, I am referring only to the subset of identity subjects Homo sapiens. Regardless, it is a different challenge; one I would argue needs to be addressed coincidentally to this development. If some group is focused on this matter, please let me know as I would gladly join their conversation.

I'm not sure exactly how to assess or respond to a statement such as this:

The truth and possible linkage is not in the claim but results from the evaluation. If the evaluating party decides it should accept the claim being made, then this decision just represents a further claim about the subject, this time made by the evaluating party (it may or may not be conveyed further). (p. 6)

It's unreasonable to disagree with the first part: the truth is not in the claim but in the evaluation. Put another way, trust exists not because I say trust me but because you choose to do so (and hope for a good result). Trustworthiness results through iteration of this step and the accumulation of these claims by others, creating a reputation for trustworthiness and making the initial claim -- by me, to trust me -- more effective and valuable. Yet, the logic of the argument may tend to fall down in practice.

We take a risk any time we make a decision: the risk is ours and ours alone. In this case it is to accept a claim by another viz. his/her identity and the integrity of that claim. To mitigate the risks associated with accepting a self-asserted claim, we tend to seek corroborating or refuting evidence from other sources and by other means. We seek references and third-party reports. We look to history. If we are with the self-asserting claimant (identity subject), we have a sniff of their body aroma, look deeply into their eyes for signs of deception, ask for other proof to satisfy our skepticism. Only in the absence of any other such evidence (and an anticipated more valuable reward) do we accept a self-made claim and accept the risk. So, my problem with the statement is that it is logically valid but practically misses a crucial part of the claim-substantiate-evaluate-accept dynamic of seeking "truth" about the identity subject.

I believe in user control and consent, and I really love the user-control statement of dogma, "It is essential to retain the paradigm of consent even when refusal might break a company's conditions of employment." (p. 6) This may very well be a fundamental requirement to maintain the strength of user control and consent, and it is an admirable ambition. I, for one, question just how many people will choose to stand for this principle in the face of termination for insubordination. The implication then is that the bad forces of government and regulation would have to rear their ugly head to create law that protects workers in this instance.

I think that minimal disclosure for a constrained use is essential for privacy and user control, which, presumably, is what drives Law no. 2. The statement, "There is no longer the possibility of collecting and keeping information 'just in case' . . ." [emphasis mine] is, however desirable and logical an outcome of a need-to-know minimal distribution of information, not part of technical mechanics. It is, as everyone doubtlessly knows, a matter of policy and practice. Somewhere I read not all that long ago that two of the non-obvious forces that are driving the creation of massive directories and databases -- about people -- are that (a) thanks to computing capability it's easy to accumulate rich records over time and (b) thanks to cheap storage there's no disincentive to keep accumulating information. These together with the underlying belief that "information is power" and all the other marketing and security-driven forces for creation of directories may be a little bit more than the principle of minimal disclosure can overcome, methinks.

Under Law no. 3 the authors write, "the system must be predictable and 'translucent' in order to earn trust." (p. 7) Wonderfully said. It also corresponds, nicely if not directly, with a statement made by lawyer Geoffrey Rosen:

Privacy is not primarily about secrecy. It's about opacity. It's about the difference between information about a person and knowledge of that person. Privacy is the ability to protect parts of ourselves in different contexts.

Time, space, and direction are, as I recall, three crucial data points in physics. Law no. 4, raising the matter of informational direction, is an excellent observation. The framework viz. identity may very well benefit from the obvious addition of time (to some extent arguably addressed by Law no. 2) and space (touched on at least a little bit in Law no. 3). This may have been the intent of these three Laws -- or not. No matter, it works very nicely.

Human integration (Law no. 6) will prove to be, I would suspect, the most challenging of the Laws to be satisfied. Not only does it require the general adherence by and acceptance of millions upon millions of unique individuals, but a change in human behaviour. [note the proper Canadian spelling] Which is not to say it can't or won't be done, only that it will take the most time and effort to achieve. Within the section on Law no. 6 is a statement in reference to air traffic communication: "The limited semiotics of the channel mean there is a very high reliability in communications." (p. 10) Is this really a matter of semiotics? Regardless, the strength of the causal relationship made in the statement is questionable. It may very well be that the long-established standards for the specific-use language (and rigorous education of all new participants viz. the structure and meaning of that language) and the awareness of each actors' role and dialog, has as much or more to do with the reliability of these communications than does the limited interpretation opportunity of that language. It might also be that the intense -- arguably exclusive -- focus on the task at hand (i.e., no bleeding of other discussion that has a specific language with overlapping and inconsistent meanings) has higher causality. It may also be that this is exactly what the authors meant.

Further down the page on the same subject the authors make a critical observation:

But we definitely don't want unintended consequences when figuring out who we are talking to or what personal information to reveal. (p. 10)

True enough, and I would extend that caution to include being wary of what unintended consequences might arise in the system (meta or otherwise) as a whole. Of course, a rigorous process designed now to achieve high reliability in communications may challenge the earlier caveat that the metasystem need not require "the whole world to agree a priori." (p. 3)

It's worth noting, in keeping with an observation that frameworks, words, and system designs all include inherent biases that, like initial conditions, can have significant effect on outcomes (because of their dependence on those initial conditions). Here again, at the end of the last block quotation, we see a bias toward information ("claim") distribution. There is or should be an offsetting concern about claim acceptance, as I've flogged above.

Law no. 7 addresses the future with an axiomatic statement that in a unifying system comprising multiple contexts the experience ought to be consistent. Sometimes its essential to hit the bull between the eyes with a 2x4, and in this rapidly evolving area that may be what's required. I have no vendor agenda so in my view there can be no qualm or disagreement here. The observations and questions I have are more about how this part of the argument could be clarified.

First, several examples of contextual identity choices are provided (p. 11). Although the full range of contexts and identity choices may approach inifinity, I wonder whether this set is not a good start at a classification of contexts. For the sake of standardization and order, would it not make sense to classify identity strength, breadth, requirement, or what-have-you in some way whether they are called tiers (as Andre Durand proposed) or layers or classes . . . ?

Second, the example of "personal" identity context is explained as "a self-asserted identity for sites . . ." The operative adjective here is "self-asserted." I'm not entirely sure I believe that there is not a finite -- and the limit is not especially far away -- number of places and activities where self-assertion without some form of support (see above) will be satisfactory. Yet in the exemplar set there is -- not even in the "community" identity -- no hint that such a personal, social (i.e., non-enterprise) identity might be contextually required, let alone relevant. If so, then we have to circle back around to initial authentication (not to bang a drum too hard).

Third, the final paragraph of the section says:

As users, we need to see our various identities as part of an integrated world which none the less respects our need for independent contexts. (p. 11)

Bravo! Under the definition of the term "identity" used here and our understanding of what independent contexts might constitute, this statement is specifically straightforward and nicely summarizes the sentiment of the Law. It is also generally right as I've supported at the outset of these observations. My only caution would be that in the naturally disconnected contour of digital identity that will evolve broadly among businesses, governments, etc., etc., the risk of identity multiplicity -- contradictory duplicate identities hidden in corners and distant reaches of the environment -- is real. The risk of systemic contamination as a result is also real.

So as I come to realize that my response may, in fact, be longer than the original document, I want to reiterate that the work is an impressive start. That there is something to disagree with -- or fawn over -- is an important step. As should be obvious by now, my perspective leads me to argue that there has to be corresponding work in the policy and philosophical realms to co-evolve with these Laws.

The singular post office

Cory Doctorow, at Boing Boing, posted an item (Boing Boing: Stross's Singularity wiki) about Charlie Stross (who I can only assume is a science fiction writer) and his creation of a "Singularity wiki." For those of you who are unaware -- as I was -- of the difference between the traditionally-defined "singularity" and science fiction writers' version, the latter is apparently "the moment in human history when things go non-linear because of the ability to upload consciousness to computers. Hitching human intelligence to PC industry's growth curve will make incomprehensible transhumans out of us, rupturing history." I'm not one for science fiction -- at least not reading it -- but found the following quote from Stross, in Boing Boing, interesting, if only because I know postal administrations are looking for their place in the post-mail world:

If you live through the Singularity and you do not try UpLoading and are not rendered PostHumous by feral calculators or get eaten by GreyGoo, you may be one of the PostHumans. PostHumans are humans who are not human any more. Some of them work for the Post Office, which keeps track of the PostHumans and sees that they do not cause outbreaks of GreyGoo, but the rest of them live a leisured life, pampered and cosseted by their UtilityFog and BushRobot an' other frightful servitors. [Emphasis mine.]

All quiet on the Western front

Every had nothing to say? Me either. Until today.

The letter and the law

I'm no civil liberties or privacy (or any kind, for that matter) lawyer, but it seems to me that when the government introduces law that would give discretion to the police to demand, obtain, and track correspondence in the mail system, that we're on unstable ground. According to the NY Times (via Yahoo! news: White House wants FBI to be able to track mail), that is exactly what one particular bill proposes.

According to a draft of the bill obtained by the Times, the plan would effectively eliminate postal inspectors' discretion in deciding when mail covers are needed, giving sole authority to the FBI, if it decides that the material is "relevant to an authorized investigation to obtain foreign intelligence."

Now, nobody is suggesting that postal inspectors are any more capable of dealing with this kind of thing than anyone else. And, we all oppose terrorism. But,

Officials on the Intelligence Committee said the legislation was intended to make the FBI the sole arbiter of when a mail cover should be conducted, after complaints that undue interference from postal inspectors had slowed operations, the Times said.

Isn't that sort of like "due processes" in its own way? The postal administration is putting up a strong front from their privacy office. Good for them. Because the real slippery slope starts when you consider that the USPS probably has the mechanical equipment to scan the "mail cover" of every letter that passes through their hands.

If that's not conservative . . .

So the Globe & Mail is carrying a little piece entitled, How to dress for career success? It may be time to think conservative. Although the story doesn't actually define "conservative" dress, here is the final graf pointing to what's obviously NOT conservative:

OfficeTeam noted the following fashion faux pas in the workplace: wearing cause-related T-shirts, midriff-baring shirts, torn clothes, excessive jewellery and overpowering fragrances.

There seems to be a lot of room for interpretation -- or the bar has drifted a lot lower than when I was first told to dress conservatively -- meaning blue suit, white shirt, single-colour tie (no pocket puff), and brogue lace-ups over black socks.

Social networks and identity

For reasons I'd rather not publicize, I've not been running for exercise but instead riding the stationary cycle. The benefit of sitting for 40 minutes without distraction is that it gives you time to read some of the papers you've printed out and promised yourself you'd get to. Yesterday I did just that with a paper I found on First Monday some time ago called The Augmented Social Network: Building identity and trust into the next-generation Internet. The authors -- Ken Jordan, Jan Hauser, and Steven Foster -- go back a long way in the networked world and in this paper provide a view of digital identity on the base-line foundation of (the value and persistence of) online social networking.

From my vantage point the paper is well worth reading -- even the section on technical components (although I have to admit that I took them at their word that the components were there and need only be properly stitched together; I skipped that part) -- because of its libertarian, public interest slant. Be forewarned, it is dense. Underlying their notion of digital identity in these overlapping social networks to which people belong is the notion of "persistent identity." This, to my view, is what bears scrutinty. There may be something here.

First of all, their description of an augmented social network (ASN):

[It] would build identity and trust into the architecture of the Internet, in the public interest, in order to facilitate introductions between people who share affinities or complementary capabilities across social networks. The ASN has three main objectives: 1) To create an Internet-wide system that enables more efficient and effective knowledge sharing between people across institutional, geographic, and social boundaries; 2) To establish a form of persistent online identity that supports the public commons and the values of civil society; and, 3) To enhance the ability of citizens to form relationships and self-organize around shared interests in communities of practice in order to better engage in the process of democratic governance. In effect, the ASN proposes a form of "online citizenship" for the Information Age. [Emphasis mine.]

Can't argue with that. And, it aligns well with Kim Cameron's Laws of Identity, particularly, it would appear, no.'s 1, 3, 4, 5, and 7.

Moving on to digital identity itelf, they provide this statement which leads to their idea of a "persistent identity":

As in real life, when you go from one virtual social milieu to another your identity will acquire a history. But because this will take place in a digital realm, designed by code and made of data, information will be attached to your identity in ways we are only now beginning to appreciate. Who decides what that capability will be, and most important, whether it contributes or not to civil society? What will your "persistent identity" online say about you, and what shouldn’t it say?

A persistent (digital) identity is, in their view, "a representation of aspects of your self that accretes over time." Which is to say, it is a directory's worth of of breadcrumbs you've dropped as you've acted online that becomes a loaf from which slices (inferences and patterns) can be cut (extracted). Sounds a little spooky to me. Although the authors do go to great pains to paint out a picture that has the identified party in control of how that information gets distributed.

Nevertheless, they imply that, converse to the practise today offline where an official identity is as "thin" as possible, a digital identity will be fat because of this accretion. They are silent on the value or even the need for an "official" or otherwise reliable mapping of the digital identity to a real person. So, in theory, it would be possible to create an entirely synthetic digital individual -- a proxy, if you will -- through persistent use of it.

The authors favour a form of federated identity, although it would seem that they are yet to be satisfied by the current activity of Passport, Liberty, and WS-* (probably because it is all happening in the private, commercial domain without civil society input/consideration). To that end they make this statement about the potential pitfalls of a digital identity system in respect of the security of the personal information held:

. . . it does little good for progressives to respond to this situation by affecting a Luddite position, using a twentieth century model for "official identity" ("less is more") as the guide for policy in the twenty-first. Today’s Internet security is reliable enough to support a working system of federated network identity. Online identity will become an ubiquitous part of daily life. The greatest danger to civil society is not that the data associated with digital profiles is open to theft and illegal activity, but rather the real possibility that a system of federated network identity that erodes civil liberties and the public commons comes into being -- while following the letter of the law.

How invertedly interesting. So to address this they seem to favour a form of social network-based identity federation, but one that is intermediated between social networks by trusted third parties. Not necessarily the institutional kind of trusted third parties that we tend to gravitate toward (at least here) such as a bank or post office or government, etc., although they leave the door open to these participants. Rather, their trusted third parties are typically and essentially those individuals who cross social networks. Think about me between two groups of people on LinkedIn, willing to make a connection that will be trusted by both sides because of the trust they each have in me. (Nasty place to be for a variety of reasons that I've expounded about before in essays on trust located here.)

There is a lot to think about in this paper. And, I personally have only begun to internalize its message. Frankly I'm not sure I'm on board with all of its premises, although the intent resonates well with me. Be that as it may, the money shot about why this activity of trying to work out a digital identity paradigm is important and the results are so critical (and why our work is noble) is a single sentence in a section about the context and trends in online communities:

The technical architectures of communications systems implicitly carry within themselves political agendas and cultural values.

That's much more to address than technical mechanics, which we all resoundingly seem to agree is not the problem.

Get on an exercise bike and read it.

A month?!?

From Media in Canada: Media In Canada - SexTV handles touchy subject:

SexTV celebrating National Masturbation Month with the show "SexTV's Most Memorable Moments In Masturbation History."

So enough about my red socks already

Some people know that I have a thing for colorful or interesting/unique footwear and have more than once taken grief for the red socks I sport ocassionally. Well the secret's out thanks to a couple British anthropologists writing in the latest issue of Nature. Red is for winners.

Anyway, the Toronto Star covers it here: Do winners owe debt to being in the red? ("Wearing red apparently gives male athletes a slight competitive edge in both team and individual sports, two British anthropologists conclude in a study published today in the journal Nature."). The Globe and Mail also has the story here: Winners wear red. ("Red coloration is associated with aggression in many animals. Often it is sexually selected so that scarlet markings signal male dominance. . . . But red is not exclusively a male trait. It's the female black widow spider that is venomous and displays a menacing red dot on her abdomen.")

Leni on-liney

Notwithstanding the specific use being put to this Sober-Q virus, I'm quite impressed with the ingenuity of the folks who decided to turn their virus into a message machine. [Ed. I've chosen to use "message" here because "branding-building" would have been a little too glib and it's synonym, "propaganda," is in the eye of the beholder.] Technewsworld has the story here: Experts Find Spam Virus Advocating Far-Right Thoughts. Quick snip:

The well-traveled Sober virus has a new variant that links to German language Web sites boasting far-right racialism, IT security experts warned on Monday.

The newly found Sober-Q virus has been apparently turned into a propaganda machine by authors, according to F-Secure , an IT security firm based in Finland.

But who'd want it?

Thanks to Boing Boing for this link to an NY Times article about Senator Ted Stevens's first-hand experience with identity theft: Personal Data for the Taking. The snip:

Senator Ted Stevens wanted to know just how much the Internet had turned private lives into open books. So the senator, a Republican from Alaska and the chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, instructed his staff to steal his identity.

"I regret to say they were successful," the senator reported at a hearing he held last week on data theft.

His staff, Mr. Stevens reported, had come back not just with digital breadcrumbs on the senator, but also with insights on his daughter's rental property and some of the comings and goings of his son, a student in California. "For $65 they were told they could get my Social Security number," he said.

Oops.

CSI: meet the Web

What can't you find here? Link care of Boing Boing: CCC | How to fake fingerprints?

BBC podcasting -- sort of

I've had the opportunity to try the BBC's new system for distributing radio and television programming (radio program in my case) that this Softpedia story: BBC proposes the online television covers. Accommodating a market shift?

For 3 months, over 5,000 families will be included in a program that allows the download of radio and TV shows transmitted by BBC; the download will be available a week after the initial airplay.

My only problem with the idea is the DRM that expires one week later. Sometimes you might want to hang on for a while before listening. In my case, it was a series of five Reith Lectures I wanted to hear, and was willing to download the bunch and then listen to them back-to-back when I go to the lake this summer. Since the lectures were broadcast weekly over five or six weeks, and I'm not going to the lake for another several weeks there's an expiration problem.

Truth be told, I'm not entirely sure whether the MP3 rights lapse one week after download or one week after first listen.

Amber alerts and geography

The SJ Mercury News is carrying a story about the amber alert system being deployed to pass messages to mobile phones in the USA. The snip below tells the story.

Beginning immediately, most of the nation's wireless carriers -- including Sprint PCS, Cingular Wireless, Nextel, Verizon Wireless and T-Mobile -- will relay information about abducted children to subscribers who ask to be notified.

In most cases, the service is free. However, users must first register their phone numbers at www.wirelessamberalerts.org and must re-register if they change service providers, even if they keep the same number.

Likewise, users must specify no more than five ZIP codes -- typically the ZIP codes at their home, workplace or child's school, covering the areas where they spend most of their time.

Alerts are sent to local authorities based on where the abduction takes place. If an Amber Alert is issued for a Bay Area abduction, for example, registered users of the text message alerts from the Bay Area will receive the message -- even if they're out of the area.

From my point of view -- mostly because it's a theme I'm writing about relative to mobility and the Internet and alleged geographic independence they provide -- here's just another example of how geography imposes itself on the ether.

As Parliament Turns

Like the soaps on television aren't enough, and the recent national (capital) past-time of persistent potential federal elections hasn't been plague enough upon our house, Belinda Stronach and prime minister Paul Martin add a new crescendo. Stronach, MP for Newmarket and failed Conservative party (Opposition) leader aspirant, has "crossed the floor" of the house to join the beleagured -- possibly criminal -- natural governing party: Liberals in government on the eve of a crucial confidence vote. CBC's story and video/audio linkshere. And, as the snip notes, she goes from freshman MP to government minister in a heartbeat. Nobody said she couldn't negotiate from strength:

The millionaire businesswoman becomes minister of human resources and skills development, the prime minister said Tuesday morning. She and will also help the Liberals implement the recommendations in the Gomery report on the scandal-plagued sponsorship program when it is delivered later this year.

21st-century Marketing: The Funnel of Love

Recently I've tried to paint a vision of how marketing may have to respond to the evolution of the consumer environment (A Lutheran View of Advertising Orthodoxy, Losing the Name Game, and From Martial to Marital Marketing: all, inlcluding this post, available in PDF here). It's generally agreed that technology and a growing consumer awareness of our technology-driven channel power are dramatically altering the consumer landscape. "Interaction," "dialog," and "invitation" represent the coming world while "invasion," "lecture," and "interruption" characterize the fading traditions of marketing. Most recently I framed the marketer-consumer relationship change as a move from an engagement to battle to an engagement to marry. The path to marriage metaphor, it seems, demands further explanation of how it applies to the business of marketing.

This business of marketing, for our purpose at least, is the process of turning strangers into persistent customers. A relatively consistent sequence of events must occur for a stranger to become a spouse (persistent love). The events parallel the process that creates loyal customers. Avoiding, ignoring, or otherwise missing any of these steps typically results in a relationship of dubious durability.

To illustrate the idea, I've constructed a relationship flow within a typical sales funnel. I've chosen this overlay, first because the ultimate goal is a sale. Second, we have to acknowledge that among a universe of strangers, we can persist with but a diminishing portion of the population at each successive stage. It is essentially the process of reducing the market from all consumers through niche and target to share. One crucial characteristic of this model is that the narrowing of the set is interactive and mutually agreed. Consider how, in our quest for love, the universe of the opposite sex proactively contributes to its own selection.

The stages through this "funnel of love" are delineated in both the illustration and the text that follow. Each stage is titled with both a commercial activity as well as a corresponding social term. I've also provided what I think are the primary consumer drivers and marketing activities of each stage. The phase changes signal to us not only permission to communicate but an invitation to get more specifically meaningful to a consumer. It is a request to mutually reveal more and to learn more.

Figure 1 -- The Funnel of Love (if the graphic doesn't appear, check the PDF)

The defining moments that signal a phase change are in the consumer's control. This is crucial for at least three reasons. First, it means that the market defines itself. Second, ultimately market selection is not in our control except to influence and persuade in a mass numbers game. Third, and critical at the first two phase changes, an interactive response mechanism is essential. Today, we must be prepared to instantly read and respond to subtle and fleeting consumer signals -- as they initiate them. Responsiveness, which we've typically assumed is sufficiently addressed by customer service centres and Websites, is today further complicated by consumer expectation: that their signal speed and individuality be reflected in the marketer's own response.

Consider the proposed four phases individually.

Strangers

Strangers are beyond us. While we can categorize and characterize them, they remain essentially unknown. When we are or we encounter strangers, there is a mystery that persists until permission is given to exchange information. Even in a casual yet lengthy conversation at an airport, until there is a mutual decision to exchange names and other information there is no change in status.

The importance here is that if there is no move from "stranger" status without mutual consent, one must be careful about requesting that phase change. There must be a suitable comfort level and perceived value to the other (the consumer) for them to initiate or positively respond to that change. Asking -- or worse, demanding and coercing it -- too soon is ineffective. Likely responses are disguise (false information), disappearance (running away), or hostility and belligerence (whipback and other unintended consequences). Remember, a stranger has not yet invested equity of any kind in the relationship. It is very easy to walk away. For that reason alone, the phase change from Stranger to Acquaintance may be the most delicate.

For a marketer, strangers are part of the potential market but have yet to reveal themselves as interested in our product or service. They are speculators whose immediate but potentially fleeting interest we have caught in some way. The stranger is qualifying us for further engagement. Our only job here is to give that unknown party the incentive to self-qualify and engage us to reveal more. We should aspire to nothing more than a cordial "tell me more." And at this stage, that -- not names, preferences, personal ID, etc. -- is all we really need.

Acquaintances

A stranger may remain essentially unknown, although recognizable, for a long time. But if a relationship is to develop, eventually we need to be acquainted. Our acquaintance pool is typically very large and can range from casual to close but we are rarely intimate with acquaintances. We may know these people by name and even have a general awareness of who they are. Our interaction with acquaintances can be meaningful and sustained, but typically there is persistent disengagement.

Although friendly and known with an implicit mutual interest to engage, an acquaintanceship is isolated, restricted, and tentative. Varying amounts of contextual information may be shared, but with acquaintances we prefer to selectively withhold knowledge of ourselves from the other. The goal is to discover, through exchange of information bits and interaction -- dialog -- mutually valuable interests and so become friends.

The marketing parallel is information gathering that begins with the consumer indicating an interest to learn more from the marketer. It requires marketer responsiveness. The formation and sustaining of an acquaintanceship is, however, an iterative process. Similar to a conversation, this interaction may loop many times. The consumer is inspecting and testing the developing relationship for points of value (i.e., desire to purchase) wondering whether to become a real prospective buyer. Meanwhile the marketer is also qualifying the consumer as a customer. Each response/request by the consumer/marketer, however, anticipates more specifically relevant and uniquely-satisfying information. That is the marketer's responsibility. Small talk, such as banal pre-packaged generalities and direction to seek information by other means do not advance the cause.

The second phase change occurs when the consumer indicates an interest to engage the selling/purchasing process. Usually this is implicit in the flow of activity. Just as a well-trained and "natural" salesman knows the closing moment, a marketer ought to be ready for the shift to the selling focus.

Friends

Friends are predisposed toward each other. They overlook flaws and faults because on the whole they appreciate and value one another. These are the real prospects in the marketing sense: they know about us and are satisfied with what we can provide to them. They are inclined at this moment to consummate that friendship with a purchase -- all other things being equal. And we are satisfied with their becoming a customer.

So how does an acquaintance turn into a friend? It is a subtle shift, noticeable to most of us only after the fact. The activity driving it is an ever-deepening sharing of knowledge and insight. It is an openness with information and an apparent interest in the others' well-being. Development of friendship demands increasing interaction and comfort with the other.

The interaction between friends as the friendship grows and develops is a negotiation. Because not all friendships are equal, friends subtly test the limits and value of the friendship at all times. As consumers, we are seeking affirmation that our interests are being best served by this rather than substitutes. We have reduced our interest to a micro-choice among alternatives rather than for the product as a class. We need and want to be sold on the specific item.

I've classified the primary commercial marketing activity as "sales" and used the word "sold" in the preceding paragraph. That selling can be in person on the showroom floor; it can happen in product literature and customer support; it can be the result of mutual friends vouching through peer-to-peer discussion (e.g., e-pinions). Regardless of how it gets done though, the consumer -- now willing to accept our credible interested (in them) counsel -- is being sold.

Best Friends, Lovers, and Spouces

These are those we hold nearest and dearest to us: the people we should respect and care for the most. Friends qualify for this status in the commercial context by the act of purchase. It is the final consummation of the many interactions and activities that have brought a stranger to our fold. In real life, this can happen almost instantly -- I'm told -- or can gestate for years -- I know. Many unpredictable events may kick the process ahead or slow it down -- or kill it irretrievably. In any event, our goal is to reach and remain in this state.

Only at this stage do we generate revenue from the marketplace. We have acquired a customer, made the sale, and put money into our treasury. Everything has been geared toward and is summed up in this phase change. It is not, however, a time to hold back the love as too many people in the divorce court know too well. We feel it in business when we lose customers to alternatives or to anger and disaffection or to simple boredom. So, reasonably, this is the right place for "customer relationship management." It’s the place to continue the dialog of people close to one another -- most especially to listen.

Consistently through each phase we see the essential need for interactive communication. Only at the very first initiation of interest in/from a stranger will one-way communication succeed. The world is social and sociability is by its very nature mutual. In the long run social success depends on trust and respect. And, not to completely oversimplify, trust and respect result from open dialog -- back and forth, ebb and flow.

Ultimately we want to find figurative lovers and spouses for us/our products among the universe of people out there. Our job is to bring them closer and closer, funneling the right ones to a purchase and a relationship even as they are themselves funneling us closer (or out) as well. To negotiate the turbulence created by the independent forces of marketer and consumer is the challenge. One approach parallels the development of love relationships, relying on mutually satisfying communication that begins superficially but, through negotiation and testing, ends in (commercial) intimacy. That absolutely depends on bilateral communication: dialog. And there is the critical change to the marketing paradigm.

* The Simpsons are a trade-mark (maybe registered) of FOX.

This essay appears as a post here in html because Doc Searls wanted to be able to search it.

Copyright, 2004-05, T.R.D. Grayson

Fare thee well DIDW

Digital Identity World 2005 is over. Doc Searls closed the show at noon today having summarized the themes that were presented over the previous days and earlier presiding over a Customer Facing Identity Directions panel which included Kim Cameron and Marc Canter.

As posted previously, lots of discussion and conversation about identity -- or at least the technology of digital identity -- that shows marked evolution from the themes of the inaugural event in 2002. But, although exhorted by key-notes to examine the issue from a "higher" view, the many break-out sessions (that I attended) came up short. This is not to suggest that it wasn't a good event and that the "conversation" has not advanced. In all likelihood, this stage of discussion is an essential precursor to where it needs to go. All things get to their natural end-point through a consistent set of steps, all of which need to be trod on. To wit, even if the ball is hit over the fence the homer isn't scored until the batter has had a foot on every base.

So what do I think was missing? Or, stated differently, where does it have to go? Here are some stream-of-consciousness thoughts. In no specific order, I observe that

The language of (digital) identity has yet to evolve and solidify to a point where it is itself not a barrier to development. There are two problems here. First, the same words are being used by different people at cross-purposes. Second, words are being used for their value-charged effect in ways that compromise -- or worse, hijack -- their implicit meaning. For example, the word "trust" remains much abused. It is being used to express a sense of confidence resulting from a defined relationship – even to the extent that the certainty is derived from a referral by a trusted third party. Thus: organization A "trusts" the credential of a person representing organization B because there is pre-arranged understanding of the authentication/authorization of the credential. This, of course, is not what the word trust implies at all in common usage. Trust is, in fact, an expression of faith in an outcome or expectation in the absence of proof in that instance. So the system is being developed as an artifice to emulate trust. Best analog: the legal system. In addition, the specific definition of the word "identity" itself remains relatively fluid.

The metaphors being used need critical re-examination because, extended to their full conclusion, they often do not hang for identity. The wallet "notion" is widely used both because of the physical-visual representation of separation that several credit cards in a wallet (along with other identity factors such as driver’s license, insurance card, etc.) provide as well as for the easy leap to the established credit card or Interac transaction processing models. While good to stimulate thought, this metaphor's (or analog) most significant shortcoming is that its model works well for payment transaction processing which is a defined-liability context. In these transactions, the existence, magnitude, transference, and ultimate retirement of liability is discrete and indisputable. Not so with identity. Which brings us to the necessary fuller exploration of

Liability remains a concept that is danced around and glibly set aside as a mere externality that will eventually take care of itself. I, personally, and many other conference attendees tend to underscore the fundamental importance of the liability issue to the ultimate value and success (or not) of any digital identity system. Unfortunately, it has yet to even develop into a proper elephant in the room -- only a cloud hanging overhead. If one thinks beyond the enterprise environment regardless of whether the transactions are B2C -- with one's own customers or those in a "circle of trust" -- or B2B/G (where the issue is resolved within the legal contracts resulting from the business deal), liability's shadow looms darker and larger -- and it has a trunk. Maybe the liability question would be more prominent we figured out,

"Where are the lawyers?" There must be a few lawyers with a specific expertise and practice that would be relevant to the discussion (e.g., privacy, civil rights, liability, and so on). Since it would appear -- by popular sense -- that most of the matters to be addressed now are commercial not technological (or, as Jamie Lewis said, deal with "automobiles not the chemical composition of asphalt"), it stands to reason that there ought to be a few lawyers weighing in. More cause for getting consiglieri on board is that laws are being enacted that have a direct impact on the outcome of this nascent industry's activities. Send lawyers, guns, and money . . . (That was completely unnecessary and utterly gratuitous, but I love the line.)

Anonymity and privacy appear to have a renewed status in the discussion. This again appears to be at least partly the domain not of technologists but of lawyers, civil rights activists, and so forth. Where is their voice (see previous)? This flip-side to the certainty we seek of a digital identity structure is critical for various reasons I think we all understand. We have but begun to scratch its surface.

Assuming away critical system conditions to develop the mechanics may be a necessary evil at this stage, but can't continue much longer. I specifically refer to the stance taken by technology-centric solution developers that their concern is not the integrity of the identity and initial credentialing. Rather, the solution assumes proofed inputs suitable for "trust" to develop. Thus, STS or what have you can exchange credentials and tokens satisfying the mechanical aspects of questioning, presenting, and authenticating, etc. "assertions." There is, of course, nothing wrong with this posture if one is merely contributing a service to a much larger system that is or has been sorted out. The business I work for, for instance, has a service called the Electronic PostMark, which time-stamps, encrypts, and overstamps a "post-mark" onto an electronic transaction as a statement of authenticity at a given moment. (There's more to it, but this should suffice here.) What has been so far purposefully left out is validation of sender and receiver credentials: the service accepts the digital credential presented in a transaction so long as it is provided by a subscribing credential issuer (e.g., the government of Canada).

We are, however, at this conference and others; as "the identity gang;" as vendors and service providers; as standards bodies -- formulating a system from essentially nothing (or at least from nothing more than disjointed pieces and nifty ideas). The system has to be addressed holistically despite what is likely to evolve from unanticipated quarters. The foundational pieces like the identity creation process and its subsequent manifestations are particularly relevant to system design. Infocards as visual manifestations of role credentials for identities is an excellent idea; but they are as meaningless as a driver's license that shows an age of 23 for a boy obviously not yet 17. (Need to add here abruptly and parenthetically -- because I have no place else to put it -- that Kim Cameron's "Seven Laws" is an impressive, if not ever-so-slightly hyperbolic stake in the ground for a higher level discussion of the guiding principals for the system.) So,

User-control of the digital identity attributes (i.e., how much and what information to present) as self-assertion will not work because the system has not replaced the absence of trust with process and greater certainty from "projected trust." What I mean is that self-assertion (as opposed to self-presentation) of identity is meaningless. After all, if I'm skeptical that you're who you present yourself to be, then providing a credential that you've created is not much help: although Jim Rockford made hay with the self-asserted business card credential throughout the series' run. Credit cards work where cheques began to fail because a credit card (once proven valid at point-of-sale) presents the "projected trust" certainty of the issuer not the holder. Personal cheques -- too easy to forge -- ultimately diminished as such an assurance of certainty and have been largely replaced. There's also that little thing about liability acceptance for fraudulent transactions, but I digress. The driver's license as a credential works only because we trust that the state of California has proofed and authenticated the presenter. We don’t trust the holder of the license any more than before, but we have some small piece of proof (there's that word again) to increase our certainty about some particular attribute of the holder.

One implication of the self-presentation model (which I believe in) is that there will likely to be various issuers of digital credentials attesting to different holder attribute sets so that the holder need present only as much information as is necessary and no more. The topology of such a system I explored in a series of essays ("Identity Planet") located on this page.

The solution does not exist. A solution and system will develop with warts and funny features. Not many things in this world have ended up as they were designed a priori, and those the did often come up short in critical ways. I believe everyone involved both realizes that and recognizes that emergence results from the intersection of critical functions, features, and developments the value and ultimate importance of any not being readily apparent until after the fact. The most heartening thing that I observed was not the "discussion" or the bun-tossing among vendors and standards bodies. Rather it was that these vendors and standards bodies are developing and implementing some active response to the challenge in the real world. They make the conditions right for more rapid advances. Oh, maybe not in the way anybody foresaw or intended, but advances they will be.

All in all, right now it's the sardonic Gallic worldview that best captures the slow pace of fast change in this industry space: Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose.

Posted by Grayson at 05:33 PM

DIDW theme update

Jamie Lewis, of Burton Group, is presenting a wide-ranging view of the identity context. He's just mentioned another couple themes emerging at this event:

Liability -- which is to say that the "system" that emerges will have to address and deal with the liabilities present within a digital identity world. Businesses, governments, and others will have to find a way to accommodate and accept varying levels of liability viz. "relative" levels of authentication and certainty. Which leads to:

Enterprise vs. social identity -- essentially the realization that there are extreme complexities in this world which make the view of digital identity an enterprise or business challenge unworkable. Jamie used the word "polymorphic" to describe how identities will be required to adapt to many circumstances, contexts, and requirements without becoming distinct and separate identities (i.e., remaining mapped to a singular individual). Good choice of word. Brings us right back, circularly, to liability.

Rising out of the weeds -- which is to say that the conversation rose above the petty squabbles about who's technical standards and architectures would be "the" right solution (and so on ad infinitum) to a level that almost addresses the full breadth of the legal, moral, and philosophical stones that are being overturned by this initiative. Certainly a step upward.

Posted by Grayson at 12:27 PM

Canadian identity

Another -- quite unspoken -- theme coming up at the DIDW conference: watch out for the Canadians.

Kim Cameron admitted to being Canadian this morning;

Dick Hardt made a pretty big production of his Canadianness during his Identity 2.0 presentation (which was very entertaining);

Stuart Vaeth -- not a Canadian -- represented Diversinet, which is Canadian

And, I'm sure that there are others here too besides Mike and me -- I mean others that aren't nobody.

Posted by Grayson at 06:17 PM

A piece of (the long) tail

Have been watching with great interest as this concept -- the long tail -- finds a voice. Have also been flogging it personally with my colleagues not accepting it's buzzword quality. Now that The Economist has run this piece: Profiting from obscurity, is that vindication? The lead:

DISRUPTIVE technologies, learning curves, tipping points--every so often a trendy new term enters the business lexicon and becomes a staple of business plans, conference speeches and PowerPoint presentations. The latest example, generating buzz among entrepreneurs, technologists and bloggers, is the idea of the "long tai". The term is not new, having long been used in statistics to refer to a feature of "power-law" distributions, such as the frequency with which different words are used in English: there are a few common words that are used a great deal, and a long tail of increasingly obscure words that are used less often. But the idea is now in vogue because of its particular relevance to the economics of e-commerce.

Themes in Identity (or at least at Digital Identity World)

First morning of DIDW is coming to a close and I'm listening to Kim Cameron from Microsoft talk about "The Laws of Identity." Interesting so far and others are blogging the content -- so I won't.

What I'm hearing this morning are several themes that are emerging in the language. Here's a start:

Long tail - referring to the latest incarnation of the power-curve framework that has been proposed for the Internet, a while ago by Clay Shirkey more recently by Chris Anderson, of Wired.

Emergence -- referring to the eventual, evolutionary result of a complex adaptive system's self-organization (i.e., it "emerges"), which comes from the world of complexity science. This theme arose quickly with Phil Becker's initial keynote.

"Identity vetting" - loosely described this refers to the dawning realization that there has to be a strong 1:1 mapping of physical individual to a digital identity(ies) and so the creation of digital identities is vastly more complex than enterprise solutions would find and propose [Ed. Wrote about this stuff at great length a year or two ago.]

Loosely coupled -- The idea comes -- again -- from complexity and the idea of "small worlds." I think David Weinberger picked up on this in his book Small pieces loosely joined.

Kim Cameron is either very, very smart or is an incompetent MBA with an exceptional vocabulary. I suspect the former and only mention it because you don't often hear the word prolegomena (prolegomenon // n. (pl. prolegomena) (usu. in pl.) an introduction or preface to a book etc., esp. when critical or discursive) in the usual business-directed PowerPoint-aided lecture.

Posted by Grayson at 03:03 PM

Film at eleven

Kodak on top in U.S. in digital market is the story from the Toronto Star that puts a lie to my death knell for Kodak and its consumer film and photography business. Well good for them. Mike, who's sitting with me right now, thinks it must be the basement price-point part of the market because the digital camera quality ("It's shite!"). Here's the lead:

Eastman Kodak Co., which shipped more digital cameras in the United States in 2004 than any of its Japanese rivals, retained its edge in the first quarter, a Framingham, Mass.-based market research firm said.

The power of an A-list referral (or, Anne Frank had to wait)

I'd become comfortably certain that this outcropping of my restless thought process was a private diary writ large to the Internet. (This was not my intent, of course; just how it was working out.) I wrote; three people read -- ocassionally; I wrote some more; fame, fortune, and good looks eluded me. Now, with one little referring link from "Mr. 98," my one-day numbers went up, up, up.

Curiousity probably.

There is real, genuine Canadian Tire money available to anyone who sticks with this column for a while.

Pacific coasting

At DIDW, in San Fran, this week. You can tell who's from the east end of the country by watching the gym at 04:30PDT. Opening night activities were pretty decent. Running into old acquaintances everywhere and being pointed to the ubiquitous blogs. Eric Norlin notes, under the subject of Congress getting set to pass a de facto national ID, that the crux of digital ID is the challenge of "proving a 1:1 relationship btwn an identity and an actual physical person." He goes on to point to the post office as one organization that could achieve that (even if he says it in the context of "many have postulated that . . .") function.

Well, thank Christ and pass the butter! Anybody with an interest can go check the flogging of this well-tread path in any of the essays here. (As Doc said last night, "Well, they're PDFs, but they don't suck.")

Real-time traffic - w/o the radio

Yahoo! Local Traffic has a Apple - dashboard widget download for Mac OS X4. I love it but it still comes up just a little short.

Had an idea like this a few years ago, but the request and alert was presented to a mobile phone -- where it makes sense . . . in your car. And, using GPS it would know where you were and alert you to relevant traffic activity. Three problems with that vision: (1) it's hard to do and GPS in mobile phones is still not pervasive; (2) who would populate the data in real-time to make the information valuable; and (3) where's the money come from/go to? Apart from that it's good to go.

But I guess it's gotta start somewhere, and this is as good a place as any.

Cheeseburger in . . . an office tower?

It doesn't get better than Jimmy and Warren Buffett on the same marque: Warren and Jimmy Buffett: Kin in Margaritaville? (Globe & Mail). Island money:

Besides sharing a surname, the two men have long suspected that they also share a common genetic history. "Warren leaves messages for 'Cousin Jimmy' and always has," says the singing Mr. Buffett, 58. "I'll take it from him." The singer calls the financier "Uncle Warren."