Stupid is . . .

I'm not sure what blog or Site I found this on, but it was a satisfying read. The essay, entitled The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity, by Carlo Cipolla makes an excellent if not satiric case for institutionalized human stupidity. I took solace in not being the only one ;)

Gedanken: when could release of information on the voter register save lives?

This is the bais of judgment on an odd statement by Canada's Chief Electoral Officer (as reported in the Globe & Mail: Elections chief would share data on voters). Strip away the philosophy and religion of keeping personal information private (admittedly hard to do given that privacy is a philosophical position that is becoming religion in this "information age), the heart of what the election chief suggests is allegedly about public safety. So the weight of opinion and decision ought to rest on whether personal privacy is more or less important than the public good. Put another way: individual or society, which is more important.

The Canadian and US social experiences are suitably different that the answer could, should, and probably would be different in these two worlds. The United States is constituted on the basis of "freedom, liberty, and justice;" Canada, on the other hand, on "peace, order, and good government." The former much more individualist; the latter socialist (not in the spectre-raising bad way -- necessarily).

Still, as long as we have any remaining vestiges of private life and property, the matter of privacy and security of the individual (including privacy of information) is a critical matter. Moreover, without the right to vote freely and anonymously (i.e., secretly, as in a "secret ballot"), the notion of a free and, particularly, "democratic" society is a joke. So, the idea that information about electors, based on their registration as electors, could or should be used for any purpose at all beyond that restricted purpose is dubious. However, as the lead graf from the Globe & Mail piece states,

Canada's Chief Electoral Officer wants the authority to share information from his voter database with other public agencies -- including the spy service -- when doing so would serve the interests of health, safety or national security.

This all has a prima facie good sound within the context of a community-favoured society. In fact, even in a more individualist society that has suffered harm as a result of terrorism, the stirring call for this kind of unthinkable act of a democratic government gets a hearing on the basis of public safety. But what public good comes from distribution of the elector list information?

Further in the article the suggestion is made that in the event of some other localized tragic event (think Katrina on the Canadian maritime coast, or a viral outbreak like SARS, or, or , or . . .) the list could be used to great effect to ensure that all the people registered to that geography were sought and found. Obviously a public good. At first glance. Begs a few questions: who is being protected by distribution of a voters' list. Obviously not those obviously without the means and requiring government assistance. Chances are they are not registered. Not resident aliens and other non-citizens: they don't make it to the voter register either. Not transients of any economic status because their information is out of date. Who then? I don't know.

Moreover, what does the CSIS agency have to do with any of this except viz. terrorism and other crimes? Please understand that I personally subscribe to the dictum that "those with nothing to hide, hide nothing." The unfortunate part of having lots of information available to choose from is that a history can be created based on select parts of that information. A history that may or may not accurately reflect the reality of one's past, and could, in fact, be maliciously fabricated. Ironically, Canada is one of those states in the world that believes in due process, habeas corpus, and innocence until proven guilty.

Frankly, I'm not sure that the proposal by the Chief Electoral Officer is dangerous or harmful in the big picture. It may indeed, one day, allow that official to "save lives." But, at first blush, my knee-jerk reaction is that it is unnecessary and a cure potentially more harmful that the problem itself.

No shit, Sherlock

The Globe & Mail is one newspaper that's carrying a pathetically obvious headline and story: Gas prices beginning to affect consumer behaviour. It would have been insightful to see this kind of story well before the first of the "perfect" economic storms hit the USA. Given that gas at the pumps has gone up someplace in the order of 20% in the past six months or so, it was a matter of time before the effect would be seen on happy consumers. Fuel surcharges and increased grocery prices, the threat of home heating increases this winter (significant here in Canada), and so on caused grumbling. But when a fill costs near $100, it catches attention.

Makes one wonder about the price elasticity of gasoline at the pump: a few cents here and there causes no change in behaviour; a 20-cent hike overnight that lasts a month . . . people start making changes. Most everyone hasn't had relief in the form of an income increase to compensate.

This item from from Newsday.com (Record set for late credit bills) makes the equally obvious observation of how consumers have, completely predicatably dealt with the changing economics. We try to ride it out in the short term without making any changes. But, something has to give:

Credit card delinquencies shot to a record high in the second quarter, as consumers tried to keep up with rising gas prices and increasing interest rates without curtailing spending, a report showed yesterday.

Sidebar: that's what happens when you're maxed out living the lifestyle to which you are "entitled."

Anticipate some bigger changes in household economics yet to come.

But the cover art's really hard to see

It makes perfect sense that SanDisk or some other solid state memory maker would help the music CD evolve institutionally as this Red Herring story (among others) shows: SanDisk Banks on Stones Album. The lead grafs:

The new Rolling Stones album will be released in a package the size of a fingernail.

The British band's latest album, A Bigger Bang, will be pre-loaded on flash memory cards made by SanDisk starting in November, the company said Tuesday.

The Sunnyvale, California-based company also unveiled a new security technology to restrict users from copying or sharing any content stored on a card. The move aims to ease music studios' and artists' worries about copyright infringement.

This, I think, could be a huge part of the music industry's effect on reversing the current "open sourcing" of music -- and the decline of their business model. To be seen.

We're back

It's been an eight-week marathon working on a corporate strategy activity, and it (more or less) ended the day before yesterday after a 10 day straight sprint of 14-plus hours. Took a real bite out of my blogging time . . . and workout time . . . and being with my family time . . . and . . . and . . . and . . .

But, at least for the time being it's slow. So I noticed this morning that both David Kearns and P.T. Ong (neither of whom I've actually met but for whom I've begun to develop a distant admiration) have taken up on words and language around identity. I'm going to jump back up on my charger and join them in our little windmill tilting once more, probably tomorrow. Meanwhile, a few posts are coming about stuff I've seen in the media.

Piling on 2: "The Importance of Identity" Online and off

In the immediately preceding post (Piling On: "The Importance of [the word] Identity"), I made a pedantic quibble with a generally good post byPhil Windley on the "Importance of Identity." The first post raised my persistent trouble with the use of the word "identity" and the flexibility of the language in general. In this post, it's my aim to pile on and add support to Phil and Jon Udell's observation and proposition that this identity thing transcends the "digital" qualifier that we have attached to it.

First things first. It is impossible not to agree with the foundational premise that, as Phil Becker repeats continuously, "ID is at the center." Whether the context is commercial transactions and ecommerce online, business-to-business activity, public/national security and safety, or just plain old making it through the complexities of everyday life, presenting and proving ourselves to others precedes all other activity. It is, in effect, becoming the price of entry in all manners of civil society.

Second, at present as we attempt to sort out the "digital" identity for online use, "analog" credentials are being used as a measure to address the need. It is, of course, suboptimal because the majority of these "offline" credentials have limitations on being used for "online" activity. The important matter here may not be the obvious inadequacy but rather the fundamental need for correspondence between so-called "offline" and "online" identity. The nature of the credential that purports that identity must, equally obviously, be suited to the nature of the medium in which it is being used. "Digital" as a modifier may have value only in specifying the primary medium for use of the credential rather than making the "identity" distinct and separate as tends to happen given the state of the language of identity.

Third, the distinctions between "corporate" and "personal/private" identity are or will soon be blurred to the point of irrelevance in many respects. This is a secondary function of the evolution that is being witnessed with this realization that "digital" itself is in fact an artificial distinction. True, it is easier to design and structure a system by limiting the application (aphoristically, "not boiling the ocean," or "eating the elephant one bite at a time," and so forth), and that has substantially happened by focusing on the commercial application of identity. Makes perfect sense: as Deep Throat intoned, "Follow the money." But, just as businesses have made use of Driver's Licenses and other acceptable credentials as a foundation for their own narrow-use identities (e.g., facility badges, HR records, etc.), so too can we expect the same to continue in the future. Wholesale redevelopment of "digital" identity as distinct from "identity" is unlikely to happen except at a technological and process level making the credential work within the context of the new environment in a way that satisfies anonymity, privacy, security, and certainty needs.

Fourth, because the national identity card notion raises the spectre of Big Brother and is objectionable to free people everywhere, and the organic development of an identity system in pockets without standards is too anarchical (maybe that's not a word, but you get my meaning), some system not especially different from that that exists in the "analog" realm today will eventually succeed. It will be characterized by the following traits:

A unique person will have a unique "identity" in the sense of being an identifiable individual among billions of others. That "identity" will be created by an authority such as a government at birth and "decommissioned" by the same government at death.

Every uniquely identified person will have the opportunity to create or accept a variety of credentials attesting to some attributes of that person/identity. There will be many providers of those credentials. Some will be more acceptable to businesses, other governments, other people, and so forth than others. Each individual and each accepting party will have the choice of which credentials it prefers to accept as a testimony of the person (identity) and certain permanent (e.g., age, sex) and transient (e.g., residence address, employer, etc.) attributes.

Many other credentials derived from those fundamental identity-credentials will be issued and rescinded from time to time over a lifetime. They will provide and attest to different sets of (contextually valid) attributes. They may or may not be supported by association to one of the core credentials issued by one of those few providers of the base identity credentials. (Today these might be the DMV, Passport, etc.)

No doubt there are more characteristics. Frankly, however, this is a good start that doesn't narrow down the possibilities too much. Underlying it all, however, is the critical fact that "digital" does not create or mean separate identity as much as it specifies a form of credential and requirement for a medium of information exchange. Identity is identity. Period.

I might be wrong. So far it's looking pretty good though. And my song remains the same.

Piling on: "The importance of [the word] identity"

Phil Windley has posted an observation (On the Importance of Identity) on Jon Udell's short observation on the importance of identity. Typically I agree with Phil -- after he wrote the book on Digital Identity and is a smart as hell guy besides. No different this time with the exception of one niggling little quibble.

As long as I've involved myself in this developing technology/process/business of (digital) identity, I've been troubled by the imprecision of the language. Imprecise language leads to imprecise thinking, which, in turn, leads to no good in the end. But, while technical standards are being developed and fought over, no such coordinated effort appears to be happening with the lexicon or taxonomomy of identity.

Phil fits in here only because in making an observation about the importance of identity -- online and off, more about which in the next, separate post -- he makes the following statement: "Our online and offline identities are, for the most part, separate." The implicit assumptions here is are that (a) identity appears to be tied to unique credentials and (b) there are or can be several identities for any individual. I rail against such a definition of the word because is contrary to my belief about (core) identity, as I've argued in essays ("The Philosophy of Identity" among others elsewhere on this Website) and in posts like this and this and this among others.

Having said that, I'm willing to change my use of the word to that of the majority if somebody can figure out and rationalize in a big picture how and why (and what we call) the unique "identity" of an individual that underwrites all those other "identities" carried about and propagated by credentials.

MBA over a weekend . . .

University of Western Ontario's Ivey School is the second of Canada's top 3 (or 5, depending on your choice of ranking agency) business schools to offer a one-year MBA (UWO's Ivey School to cut MBA program to one year). The program cost has likely risen because it's not the time put in but the intensity of the educational program. Besides the product is being demanded according to this quote:

The one-year MBA, rare in North America, is a response to market demand, as students and recruiters seek more intensive learning, Dean Carol Stephenson said.

So it's only a matter of time before we get to the intensity of a weekend at a business school with two heavy days of cross-functional knowledge and presentations, a bunch of 10-minute caselettes and the following exam question:

You invested one weekend of your time and paid $150,000 to have the right to append MBA on your business cards and in your cv. Do you undertsand the economics of this transaction?

Musing about the future, looking at the past

I have a milestone birthday coming shortly which has me pondering generally but mostly about the 8-10 hours a day I spend in what I loosely call a career. Not quite a mid-life crisis, but a good stock-taking time. Your feedback, counsel, advice, and -- yes -- help (if you can bring yourself to it) will be asked for at the end, so enjoy the tale that follows. Maybe you can relate to it.

First, some back story. About five years ago I needed money. The dot-com I was starting up flamed out because we didn't get the post-Angel dough before the capital market melted down. Had sort of rolled the dice and was now without cash inflow or savings to match the persistent cash outflow that continued unabated. Bummer.

So I went to get a job. People actually told me that my 15 years of contract consulting at business strategy was not "real" experience. That is, it wasn't within a "real" (read: big) business. The rubber-meets-road business experience of really, actually meeting a payroll during my periodic serial entrepreneurship did me no service either because (a) it wasn't "real" business (again, read: corporate, big) and (b) it suggested I was a flight risk who would go back to starting-up as soon as I could. Not much anyone could say to that except maybe, "Oh yeah? Well . . . that's just not true." Big deal. The only thing to do was prove it. Besides, corporate experience couldn't hurt in the big scheme of things.

So, for reasons that made perfect sense at the time, I took a job for which my broad, general business experience was excessive. I was underhired, but as I said earlier, I needed money and the experience. And I was prepared to regain the ground I'd lost. The job was with an organization that is about as corporate and bureaucratic as you can find: rigorously structured and large by any measure. (I'll never forget one of my first internal meetings when I got business cards from people that worked for the same business.) And, from my perspective, I've performed very well while taking my lessons about corporate life and corporate perspective.

Over the past four years I've been involved at the centre of two corporate strategy activities and -- I think -- distinguished myself by standing in there with the most senior executives in the company while carrying the handicap of talking "up" nothing less than two hierarchical levels. That and being the "e" guy (read: flake) in the group. My employer's enduring interest in digital identity has given me the opportunity to become familiar if not near-expert in the business (and maybe even the philosophy) of digital identity as well you may know from this blog's typical content. Moreover, during this tenure I've also been able to indulge my desire to practice writing by blogging and writing essays on a variety of businessesque subjects, some of which have been published in magazines and newspapers. Got three patents with my colleague/boss for my product development efforts too. All in all, a pretty good showing.

The thing that I am most personally satisfied with is what I did to bring a very cool idea to life. When I first arrived and had nothing to do I was handed a nascent idea for a Web-based single-point registration engine that would allow surfers to ask for stuff anonymously. Having just come off a dot-com and with an unnatural interest in mobile telephony (SMS), I enhanced the idea by adding the phone. Then through a bit of tenacious market validation (litererally 20 lunches with senior executives from telecomm, advertising, Internet, and consumer merchandising), career-limiting refusal to be cowed into accepting the 70-year old EVP sponsor's insistence that, "Tim, you're not hearing me. It's about the Web," and the exceptional internal promotion skills of my colleague (boss) I saw the concept funded for market test -- if the prototype could be built and the ecosystem of partners and participants assembled.

I'd had enough and wanted to try something else. That lasted about two months before, at the new team's insistence, I was brought back to do the non-build stuff. So I hit the road. Forty-five thousand airmiles, probably a hundred or more meetings, thousands of nagging follow-up calls, engaging several well-connected influencers and riding them like Secretariat, and unashamedly asking people who had no interest to invest and participate in something they didn't want to do, my (surprising) unmitigated chutzpah paid off. By default and negotiation with wireless and technology partners, media companies, and advertisers I set the test time and location. It was done. Then, as the test was being prepared for operation, off I went into the sunset (and don't think I'm not still a little bitter about that push; but it's in the past). Regardless, the whole thing happened in no small part because I had something to prove -- mostly to myself.

I'm going to take a break for a moment and say that I do realize that this particular post has me at the centre to an indiscrete degree. Hard to get away from it. I apologize, but do not retract a word. It is what it is. Now back to our story, which we pick up with the musing mentioned at the top.

Here's the nub (finally): I am pleased with my accomplishments and what I've learned. It's possible that my employer and/or certain people in the organization are too. However, I feel a little unrewarded since this kind of accomplishment at many places would have resulted in significant status and even financial elevation. Be that as it may, and that's not my entire point, what I'm wondering about is what's left?

What's left to do except maybe more of the same? The project I spent a lot of time describing may be one of the biggest initiatives the organization has undertaken in a while. The strategy work I'm involved in cuts to the very future of the business. And . . .? I'm feeling a bit like the guy who blows into town, does his unsung job, and, in the last scene, has to leave to go where they need him more (or, for you Canadians out there, like "The Littlest Hobo" --woof). So the pondering is this:

If you don't feel rewarded and, in fact, are stagnating -- while at the same time sense that you've succeeded doing as much as can be done in the circumstance -- is it appropriate to move on? Or should one just suck it up?

This is part of what I don't know about a job and a corporate career. Can anybody -- confidentially or in the comments -- tell me their story if it's near the same, provide an opinion, give some advice? I plan on using it.

Off topic. My wife: wonderful

I'm working on the next post you'll see here. My wife has asked what I'm doing and why I don't write something nice, real . . . (about her). This may or may not be a good forum for it, but here it is.

My wife is the most wonderful person in the world. Tolerates my eccentricities and sometimes intolerable self-assuredness, makes sure that my real life (i.e., away from work) is as good as it can be, and does the bulk of the raising of my equally wonderful (for entirely different reasons) daughter. Good thing I found her.

So that's it.

Dave Rogers's eloquence

I don't know what Dave Rogers does for a living -- if anything, since he's retired USN. I do know that I appreciate his POV, regularly stirred up on Groundhog Day (his blog), which succeeded the earlier incarnation, "Time's Arrow." Were that I was as eloquent as Mr. Rogers.

I point to a post from the other day entitled, Changes, in which Mr. Rogers ruminates about the failure of leadership behind the Gulf Coast catastrophe left in Katrina's wake. It's a long and winding tale, well worth following through because where it ends is at a pot of gold. Mr. Rogers says well much of what I've tried to communicate in so many places and ways. For me a core aspect of his essay comes toward the end, and I've extracted it here:

What happened in the failures of government in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina was not something intrinsic to the nature of bureaucracies or the public sector. What happened was a failure of leadership, a failure to renew and strengthen the shared faith that makes each of us a part of something larger, and hopefully, better than we are as individuals. What happened was a failure of leadership to keep faith with us.

That failure in leadership was not an accident. It was the result of too many years of too much neglect of the value of public service. For too many years, for too many people, public service has become just a means of advancing oneself in the private sector. People with something to gain, people with a profit motive, selfish, cynical people, have blurred the ideas of authority, responsibility, and accountability. All toward the end of abusing their authority to promote themselves while neglecting or ignoring their responsibilities, oblivious to the shared faith that has become the tattered and fraying social fabric that binds us together.

That failure in leadership was not an accident. It was the product of a political system that has embraced the ways and the methods of the marketplace to manipulate people, to command their attention or distract it. To craft clever, meaningless messages intended to obscure more than to illuminate. To appeal to fear rather than courage. To value appearance over substance. A marketplace in which honesty and integrity are often perceived as impediments to a healthy bottom line.

Regardless of whether public service is, in fact, an essential element of creating and/or sustaining a "community" sensibility in people who have become largely attached to the market mentality, there is a lot in this nugget of observation itself. Regular (or even constipated irregular) readers can look to this space for the draft of an essay tentatively entitled, "To thine own self, be . . partial" on this very subject.

Way to go Mr. Rogers.

There are those who think it's a redundancy

The large-type headline on the Globe & Mail reads: It was hyped as a TERRORIST map It was cited by Egyptian TORTURERS It is a VISITOR'S GUIDE to Ottawa. HEH