Musings of a Trust Architect: Has our SSI Ecosystem Become Morally Bankrupt?
This topic was presented at IIWXXXIX Fall 2024 on October 29, 2024. My name is Christopher Allen. In 2016, in advance of the ID2020 conference at the Unit...
- Social Media 22
- Self-Sovereign Identity 13
- Community 12
- Musings of a Trust Architect 11
- Collaborative Tools 8
- Dunbar's Number 8
- Collective Choice 7
- Relationships 6
- Ratings 6
- Trust 6
- MBA in Sustainable Systems 6
- User Interface 5
- Privacy 5
- Community by the Numbers 5
- Using the Social Web for Social Change 5
- Creativity 4
- Online Games 4
- Identity 4
- Design Patterns 4
- Security 4
- Cryptography 4
- Progressive Trust 4
- Opinions 4
- SSL 4
- Ostrom 4
- Advocacy 4
- Sharing Economy 3
- Music 3
- Reciprocity 3
- Conference 3
- Social Software 3
- History 3
- Heartbleed 3
- Commons 3
- RWOT 3
- Media 2
- Sexism 2
- iPhone 2
- Language 2
- Blog Action Day 2
- Persuasion 2
- Matt Taylor 2
- Work 2
- Sharing 2
- Signatures 2
- Legislation 2
- Data Minimization 2
- Cliques 2
- Micropayments 1
- Social Capital 1
- Uncanny Valley 1
- Robots 1
- Home 1
- Reputation 1
- Web of Trust 1
- Politics 1
- Rankings 1
- Ranking 1
- Investment 1
- Hackathon 1
- Uncertainty 1
- Creative Commons 1
- Licenses 1
- Shared Artifacts 1
- Passwords 1
- Climate Change 1
- Favors 1
- Bias 1
- Environment 1
- Hypercard 1
- Triads 1
- Dyads 1
- Stories 1
- Planning 1
- Freedom to Fail 1
- Consensus 1
- Collective Governance 1
- Participatory Ecosystem 1
- Agility 1
- Open Source 1
- Open Silicon 1
- Musings 1
- Living Systems Theory 1
- Self-Sovereign Computing 1
- Verifiable Credentials 1
- Schnorr 1
Self-Sovereign Identity
Blockchain Commons in 2024
I regularly post all of my “Musings of a Trust Architect” to both here and Blockchain Commons, but other posts at Blockchain Commons may be of interest as we...
Musings of a Trust Architect: Open & Fuzzy Cliques
Digital communities are collections of individual entities that are connected together. They can be modeled as graphs, with the individuals being nodes and t...
Musings of a Trust Architect: Edge Identifiers & Cliques
Since the mid-1990s, I’ve been advocating for the creation of secure digital infrastructures that protect human rights, civil liberties, and human dignity on...
Echoes from History II
This article, like “Echoes from History: Designing Self-Sovereign Identity with Care”, is drawn from a book I have in process called FOREMEMBRANCE, which c...
Echoes from History
This article was originally published as an advance reading for RWOT12 in Köln, Germany on August 9, 2023. It has been slightly edited for this reprint. ...
Musings of a Trust Architect: Least & Necessary Design Patterns
ABSTRACT: The principles of least privilege and least authority are core computer security principles that can minimize attacks. Not only can they be exte...
Self-Sovereign Computing
ABSTRACT: Self-Sovereign Computing is a transformative paradigm designed to empower individuals to take command of their digital journey and to uphold t...
Musings of a Trust Architect: The Origins of Self-Sovereign Identity
ABSTRACT: The idea of Self-Sovereign Identity emerged in 2016, but it has inspirations dating back centuries. This article explores the historic evolution...
Private Key Disclosure: A Needless Threat to Rights and Assets
UPDATE 2023-02-16: This bill has passed the Wyoming Assembly 41-13, a day after the Wyoming Senate passed it by a vote of 31-0. If Wyoming Governor Mark Gord...
Principal Authority: A New Perspective on Self-Sovereign Identity
This summer, we’ve been iterating through an article intended to talk about the success that Blockchain Commons has had working with the Wyoming legislature ...
Self-Sovereign Identity: 5 Years On
ABSTRACT: On April 26, 2016, Christopher released “The Path to Self-Sovereign Identity”, a foundational article on SSI. Five years on, self-sovereign iden...
The Path to Self-Sovereign Identity
Today I head out to a month-long series of events associated with identity: I’m starting with the 22st (!) Internet Identity Workshop next week; then I’m sp...
Community
“Look Up” Your Strong Ties, Connect to Your Weak Ties
One of my “Digital Influence” students at Pinchot.edu asked me about my thoughts regarding this video.
Dyads & Triads — The Smallest Teams
(By Christopher Allen with Elyn Andersson and Shannon Appelcline) Two years ago, the Bainbridge Graduate Institute (www.BGI.edu) faculty gathered to radic...
Manage the Environment, Not the People
Matt Taylor Photo In the late 80’s I met Matt Taylor at a Mac user group event, and we became friends. We eventually became reciprocal apprentices — he learn...
Facilitating Small Gatherings Using “The Braid”
I was musing as I was preparing for next week’s Intensive at BGI that I have 21 students in my class, an uncomfortable size. That’s because it lies between...
Community by the Numbers, Part III: Power Laws
In my first article in this series I talked about community numbers: how the sizes of groups ultimately affect their success (or failure). However what I dis...
Community by the Numbers, Part II: Personal Circles
In my previous post, I talked about the limits on sizes of tightly-knit communities. These group limits are closely related to a number of interesting person...
Community by the Numbers, Part One: Group Thresholds
We often think of communities as organic creatures, which come into existence and grow on their own. However, the truth is they are fragile blossoms. Althou...
Dunbar Number & Group Cohesion
There is some more excellent research this week by Nick Yee and Nicolas Ducheneaut in the PlayOn blog. Again, their research provides good insight into socia...
The Dunbar Number as a Limit to Group Sizes
Lately I’ve been noticing the spread of a meme regarding “Dunbar’s Number” of 150 that I believe is misunderstanding of his ideas.
My Advice to Social Networking Services
I have now had CEOs of three different social networks send me emails asking me to compare Orkut to their service. I’ve not had a chance to dig deeply into g...
Joi on Identity and Size of Networks
Joi Ito’s Web: Blogger’s block, collapsing facets and the number 150 offers some insights on two different topics:
Skotos and Social Software
I’ve been interested for several years in the ability of “player-generated content” to create niche or small multiplayer online games, at a company I’ve inve...
Musings of a Trust Architect
Musings of a Trust Architect: Building Trust in Gradients
Progressive Trust—it sounds a bit like something from a relationship advice column, right? But in the world of digital interactions, it’s actually a revoluti...
Musings of a Trust Architect: Has our SSI Ecosystem Become Morally Bankrupt?
This topic was presented at IIWXXXIX Fall 2024 on October 29, 2024. My name is Christopher Allen. In 2016, in advance of the ID2020 conference at the Unit...
Musings of a Trust Architect: Open & Fuzzy Cliques
Digital communities are collections of individual entities that are connected together. They can be modeled as graphs, with the individuals being nodes and t...
Musings of a Trust Architect: Edge Identifiers & Cliques
Since the mid-1990s, I’ve been advocating for the creation of secure digital infrastructures that protect human rights, civil liberties, and human dignity on...
Musings of a Trust Architect: Minimum Viable Architecture (MVA)
ABSTRACT: Minimum Viable Architecture (MVA) is an alternative to the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) approach, emphasizing the importance of a robust, scalable,...
Musings of a Trust Architect: A Layperson’s Intro to Schnorr
ABSTRACT: Schnorr signatures have been a long time coming, but now that they’re finally here, they open up broad new cryptographic frontiers, including the i...
Musings of a Trust Architect: Least & Necessary Design Patterns
ABSTRACT: The principles of least privilege and least authority are core computer security principles that can minimize attacks. Not only can they be exte...
Musings of a Trust Architect: Open Silicon
ABSTRACT: Drawing inspiration from Ken Thompson’s seminal work, Reflections on Trusting Trust, there are deep-rooted challenges in establishing trust in c...
Musings of a Trust Architect: Problems of Cryptographic Agility
ABSTRACT: Cryptographic agility was once seen as a desirable goal for computer security, but increasingly problems such as high costs, bad interactions, a...
Musings of a Trust Architect: Data Minimization & Selective Disclosure
I have been struggling for a while to communicate my framing of definitions for Data Minimization and Selective Disclosure, which are privacy-focused data-pr...
Musings of a Trust Architect: Progressive Trust
A New Approach to Building Trust in Decentralized Systems Musings of a Trust Architect is a series of articles by Life with Alacrity author and Blockchain C...
Collaborative Tools
SynchroEdit: Simultaneous Editing for the Web
For the last several months I’ve been working on a new open source project that I’ve been calling SynchroEdit. SynchroEdit is a browser-based simultaneous mu...
JotSpot: Application Wiki
Joe Kraus, one of the co-founders of Excite, and new blogger has long been rumored to be working on a new wiki tool. Today at the Web 2.0 conference Joe fin...
TiddlyWiki
I keep an eye out for new ideas in Wiki technology (see my post from February Looking at Wiki), and I recently became fascinated by TiddlyWiki. It is sort of...
Simple Yet Sophisticated Group Page Editing
I have been leading the design of a new Open Source collaboration tool called EditThisPagePHP, which started six months ago and now is in beta.
Looking at Wiki
I’ve not just been spending time looking at social networking services, I’ve also been digging deeper into wiki. I’ve still got more to go, but some of these...
Working on Wiki Design Patterns
I’ve been working today on understand the Design Pattern Language behind the Wiki concept. I’ve been making some postings at the Meatball Wiki site on this t...
Reinventing Email
As a user-interface designer in the 80’s for companies like Apple Computer, and as old ‘groupware’ professional in the early 90’s, I’ve been quite disappoint...
EditThisPagePHP – Lightweight Experimental Wiki
I have been working on some code for experimenting with some of my ideas regarding the future of wiki’s, at EditThisPagePHP which is hosted at SourceForge.
Dunbar's Number
Community by the Numbers, Part III: Power Laws
In my first article in this series I talked about community numbers: how the sizes of groups ultimately affect their success (or failure). However what I dis...
Community by the Numbers, Part II: Personal Circles
In my previous post, I talked about the limits on sizes of tightly-knit communities. These group limits are closely related to a number of interesting person...
Community by the Numbers, Part One: Group Thresholds
We often think of communities as organic creatures, which come into existence and grow on their own. However, the truth is they are fragile blossoms. Althou...
Dunbar Number & Group Cohesion
There is some more excellent research this week by Nick Yee and Nicolas Ducheneaut in the PlayOn blog. Again, their research provides good insight into socia...
Dunbar & World of Warcraft
In my initial blog entry on the Dunbar Number I presented some statistics on group sizes based on the online game Ultimata Online. In it you could clearly se...
Dunbar, Altruistic Punishment, and Meta-Moderation
In my post about the Dunbar Number I offered some evidence on the levels of satisfaction of various group sizes based on some empirical data from online game...
Dunbar Triage: Too Many Connections
As someone who now has over 171 professional “connections” in my LinkedIn Profile, 198 “friends” on Orkut, many more non-intersecting friends and acquaintan...
The Dunbar Number as a Limit to Group Sizes
Lately I’ve been noticing the spread of a meme regarding “Dunbar’s Number” of 150 that I believe is misunderstanding of his ideas.
Collective Choice
Collective Choice: Experimenting with Ratings
By Christopher Allen & Shannon Appelcline
Ratings: Who Do You Trust?
My colleague, Shannon Appelcline, has been working on a game rating system for RPGnet. This has resulted in real-world application of the principles for desi...
Using 5-Star Rating Systems
In Collective Choice: Rating Systems I discuss ratings scales of various sorts, from eBay’s 3-point scale to RPGnet’s double 5-point scale, and BoardGame Gee...
Collective Choice: Competitive Ranking Systems
By Christopher Allen & Shannon Appelcline
Systems for Collective Choice
By Christopher Allen & Shannon Appelcline
Collective Choice: Rating Systems
By Christopher Allen & Shannon Appelcline [This is the second of a series of articles on collective choice, co-written by my collegue Shannon Appelclin...
Relationships
“Look Up” Your Strong Ties, Connect to Your Weak Ties
One of my “Digital Influence” students at Pinchot.edu asked me about my thoughts regarding this video.
Community by the Numbers, Part II: Personal Circles
In my previous post, I talked about the limits on sizes of tightly-knit communities. These group limits are closely related to a number of interesting person...
Cheers: Belongingness and Para-Social Relationships
In yesterday’s All Things Considered, NPR commentator Jake Halpern questions why you feel like you have a relationship with the characters in your favorite T...
Dunbar Triage: Too Many Connections
As someone who now has over 171 professional “connections” in my LinkedIn Profile, 198 “friends” on Orkut, many more non-intersecting friends and acquaintan...
Great Social Networking Posts
While I’ve been out attending the SXSW Music, Movie and Interactive Conference there has been a flurry of high-quality postings about Social Networking.
Social Software – Problems & the Definition of “Friends”
I’ve been playing around with a number of so-called Social Software/Social Networking sites for about six months.
Ratings
Collective Choice: Experimenting with Ratings
By Christopher Allen & Shannon Appelcline
Ratings: Who Do You Trust?
My colleague, Shannon Appelcline, has been working on a game rating system for RPGnet. This has resulted in real-world application of the principles for desi...
Using 5-Star Rating Systems
In Collective Choice: Rating Systems I discuss ratings scales of various sorts, from eBay’s 3-point scale to RPGnet’s double 5-point scale, and BoardGame Gee...
Systems for Collective Choice
By Christopher Allen & Shannon Appelcline
Collective Choice: Rating Systems
By Christopher Allen & Shannon Appelcline [This is the second of a series of articles on collective choice, co-written by my collegue Shannon Appelclin...
My Advice to Social Networking Services
I have now had CEOs of three different social networks send me emails asking me to compare Orkut to their service. I’ve not had a chance to dig deeply into g...
Trust
Musings of a Trust Architect: Building Trust in Gradients
Progressive Trust—it sounds a bit like something from a relationship advice column, right? But in the world of digital interactions, it’s actually a revoluti...
Musings of a Trust Architect: Data Minimization & Selective Disclosure
I have been struggling for a while to communicate my framing of definitions for Data Minimization and Selective Disclosure, which are privacy-focused data-pr...
Musings of a Trust Architect: Progressive Trust
A New Approach to Building Trust in Decentralized Systems Musings of a Trust Architect is a series of articles by Life with Alacrity author and Blockchain C...
Is the Sharing Economy Changing Our Culture of Trust?
I like this meme. I hope that positive changes to attitudes about trust is a true cultural shift.
Progressive Trust
I believe that as we evolve social software to better serve our needs and the needs of the groups that we are involved in, we need to figure out how to apply...
MBA in Sustainable Systems
The Four Kinds of Privacy
(This article has been cross-posted in Medium) Ssh by Katie Tegtmeyer CC-BY (crop2)
Introduction to the Social Web (Reading List#SW4SX)
These are the initial required readings for the first two weeks of my Using the Social Web for Social Change class (hashtag #SW4SX) that I teach in the MBA i...
Using the Social Web for Social Change (Syllabus#SW4SX)
This fall with be the 4th year, and the 5th time that I’ve taught the class Using the Social Web for Social Change (hashtag #SW4SX) in the MBA in Sustainable...
BGIedu Students Post for Blog Action Day on Food
Today is Blog Action Day, where each year a topic is chosen and bloggers and activists worldwide write about that topic in their blogs or post about it on T...
Blog Action Day on Climate Change
Late this evening while catching up on my feeds, I saw for the first time that this year’s Blog Action Day is on the topic of Climate Change. This event is s...
Teaching “Using the Social Web for Social Change” at BGI.edu
Starting next week I will be teaching a course at the Bainbridge Graduate Institute on the topic of “Using the Social Web for Social Change”.
User Interface
Google Suggest Dissected
As a former Macintosh developer, I’ve always been disappointed with the user-interface of web pages. The state of the art of UI design moved backwards with t...
Map Mashup
I’m a sucker for great user-interface design ideas, especially if they succeed with what typically has poor UI design – web pages.
Annoyed by Zero Degrees
As I’m studying social network software right now, I consider it my job to try many of the hundred some odd social networks out there right now.
Robots Dancing in the Uncanny Valley, Knowledge Navigator and UI Design
At a recent unofficial gathering of Future Salon’ers, there was a discussion about a demonstration of four robots doing a japanese fan dance to music (I thin...
Reinventing Email
As a user-interface designer in the 80’s for companies like Apple Computer, and as old ‘groupware’ professional in the early 90’s, I’ve been quite disappoint...
Privacy
The Four Kinds of Privacy
(This article has been cross-posted in Medium) Ssh by Katie Tegtmeyer CC-BY (crop2)
Intimacy Gradient and Other Lessons from Architecture
A number of my posts have been about integrating different domains of knowledge in order to better understand how human behavior should be incorporated in th...
Four Kinds of Privacy
I’ve been thinking about the nature of privacy a lot lately.
My Advice to Social Networking Services
I have now had CEOs of three different social networks send me emails asking me to compare Orkut to their service. I’ve not had a chance to dig deeply into g...
Confirmed Email Privacy Hole at Orkut
Another Orkut user and I have confirmed a privacy hole in Orkut whenever you send a message to someone via Orkut.
Community by the Numbers
Dyads & Triads — The Smallest Teams
(By Christopher Allen with Elyn Andersson and Shannon Appelcline) Two years ago, the Bainbridge Graduate Institute (www.BGI.edu) faculty gathered to radic...
Facilitating Small Gatherings Using “The Braid”
I was musing as I was preparing for next week’s Intensive at BGI that I have 21 students in my class, an uncomfortable size. That’s because it lies between...
Community by the Numbers, Part III: Power Laws
In my first article in this series I talked about community numbers: how the sizes of groups ultimately affect their success (or failure). However what I dis...
Community by the Numbers, Part II: Personal Circles
In my previous post, I talked about the limits on sizes of tightly-knit communities. These group limits are closely related to a number of interesting person...
Community by the Numbers, Part One: Group Thresholds
We often think of communities as organic creatures, which come into existence and grow on their own. However, the truth is they are fragile blossoms. Althou...
Creativity
Compensating the Creators
I was going through my first blog posts, and rediscovered a quote from 2003 Game Designer and Pundit Greg Costikyan from his blog Games * Design * Art * Cult...
User Content, Social Software & Online Games
Shannon Appelcline, my colleague at Skotos (an online game company that I founded in 1999), has been writing for several years a sometimes weekly, sometimes ...
Skotos and Social Software
I’ve been interested for several years in the ability of “player-generated content” to create niche or small multiplayer online games, at a company I’ve inve...
Perspective on Capital to Market
Game Designer and Pundit Greg Costikyan: wrote in his blog a thought I can’t believe that I’ve not heard of before, it makes so much sense. But it is new to ...
Online Games
Dunbar & World of Warcraft
In my initial blog entry on the Dunbar Number I presented some statistics on group sizes based on the online game Ultimata Online. In it you could clearly se...
User Content, Social Software & Online Games
Shannon Appelcline, my colleague at Skotos (an online game company that I founded in 1999), has been writing for several years a sometimes weekly, sometimes ...
Socialization in Online Games
I’ve been playing around with a number of so-called Social Software/Social Networking sites for about six months.
Skotos and Social Software
I’ve been interested for several years in the ability of “player-generated content” to create niche or small multiplayer online games, at a company I’ve inve...
Identity
Musings of a Trust Architect: Has our SSI Ecosystem Become Morally Bankrupt?
This topic was presented at IIWXXXIX Fall 2024 on October 29, 2024. My name is Christopher Allen. In 2016, in advance of the ID2020 conference at the Unit...
Musings of a Trust Architect: Open & Fuzzy Cliques
Digital communities are collections of individual entities that are connected together. They can be modeled as graphs, with the individuals being nodes and t...
Musings of a Trust Architect: Edge Identifiers & Cliques
Since the mid-1990s, I’ve been advocating for the creation of secure digital infrastructures that protect human rights, civil liberties, and human dignity on...
Joi on Identity and Size of Networks
Joi Ito’s Web: Blogger’s block, collapsing facets and the number 150 offers some insights on two different topics:
Design Patterns
Musings of a Trust Architect: Minimum Viable Architecture (MVA)
ABSTRACT: Minimum Viable Architecture (MVA) is an alternative to the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) approach, emphasizing the importance of a robust, scalable,...
Musings of a Trust Architect: Least & Necessary Design Patterns
ABSTRACT: The principles of least privilege and least authority are core computer security principles that can minimize attacks. Not only can they be exte...
Intimacy Gradient and Other Lessons from Architecture
A number of my posts have been about integrating different domains of knowledge in order to better understand how human behavior should be incorporated in th...
Working on Wiki Design Patterns
I’ve been working today on understand the Design Pattern Language behind the Wiki concept. I’ve been making some postings at the Meatball Wiki site on this t...
Security
Some History of SSL Security Reviews
Regarding the Heartbleed bug, SSL and TLS vendors used to require code security reviews before CAs would accept certificate requests from that implementation.
Security & Cryptography:The Bad Business of Fear
As I head out next week to the RSA Conference I realized that it has been 13 years since I attended the first one. I remember fondly the potential and power ...
Confirmed Email Privacy Hole at Orkut
Another Orkut user and I have confirmed a privacy hole in Orkut whenever you send a message to someone via Orkut.
Insecurity at Orkut
Like many others, I’ve been paying attention to Orkut in the last couple of weeks. I’ve answered more requests to be “friends” on Orkut then I have of any of...
Cryptography
Musings of a Trust Architect: Problems of Cryptographic Agility
ABSTRACT: Cryptographic agility was once seen as a desirable goal for computer security, but increasingly problems such as high costs, bad interactions, a...
Post RSA Conference Wrapup
I spent most of last week at the RSA Conference in San Francisco.
Security & Cryptography:The Bad Business of Fear
As I head out next week to the RSA Conference I realized that it has been 13 years since I attended the first one. I remember fondly the potential and power ...
Progressive Trust
Musings of a Trust Architect: Building Trust in Gradients
Progressive Trust—it sounds a bit like something from a relationship advice column, right? But in the world of digital interactions, it’s actually a revoluti...
Musings of a Trust Architect: Data Minimization & Selective Disclosure
I have been struggling for a while to communicate my framing of definitions for Data Minimization and Selective Disclosure, which are privacy-focused data-pr...
Musings of a Trust Architect: Progressive Trust
A New Approach to Building Trust in Decentralized Systems Musings of a Trust Architect is a series of articles by Life with Alacrity author and Blockchain C...
Progressive Trust
I believe that as we evolve social software to better serve our needs and the needs of the groups that we are involved in, we need to figure out how to apply...
Opinions
Systems for Collective Choice
By Christopher Allen & Shannon Appelcline
Extrapolative Hostility in the Online Medium
Extrapolate To infer an unknown from something that is known; conjecture. -- The Random House College Dictionary
Politics with Respect
This is not a political blog, but like most bloggers I’ve been indundated with various discussions about the Bush Administration, Michael Moore, Red vs. Blue...
SSL
Freedom to Fail & Freakonomics podcast “Failure is Your Friend”
I often speak about “Freedom to Fail” as an essential element of success for all sizes of systems and processes such as a hackathons, ecosystems, corporate c...
Some History of SSL Security Reviews
Regarding the Heartbleed bug, SSL and TLS vendors used to require code security reviews before CAs would accept certificate requests from that implementation.
Ostrom
Musings of a Trust Architect: The Origins of Self-Sovereign Identity
ABSTRACT: The idea of Self-Sovereign Identity emerged in 2016, but it has inspirations dating back centuries. This article explores the historic evolution...
Defining “Participatory Ecosystem” — Grow the Pie, Not Slice It!
A blog on social software, collaboration, trust, security, privacy, and internet tools by Christopher Allen. Defining “Participatory Ecosystem” — Grow the P...
A Revised “Ostrom’s Design Principles for Collective Governance of the Commons
A Revised “Ostrom’s Design Principles for Collective Governance of the Commons” The traditional economic definition of “the commons” are those resources th...
10 Design Principles for Governing the Commons
In 2009, Elinor Ostrom received the Nobel Prize in Economics for her “analysis of economic governance, especially the commons”.
Advocacy
Echoes from History II
This article, like “Echoes from History: Designing Self-Sovereign Identity with Care”, is drawn from a book I have in process called FOREMEMBRANCE, which c...
Echoes from History
This article was originally published as an advance reading for RWOT12 in Köln, Germany on August 9, 2023. It has been slightly edited for this reprint. ...
Private Key Disclosure: A Needless Threat to Rights and Assets
UPDATE 2023-02-16: This bill has passed the Wyoming Assembly 41-13, a day after the Wyoming Senate passed it by a vote of 31-0. If Wyoming Governor Mark Gord...
Principal Authority: A New Perspective on Self-Sovereign Identity
This summer, we’ve been iterating through an article intended to talk about the success that Blockchain Commons has had working with the Wyoming legislature ...
Music
Apple, AirVideo, and Immersive vs Ambient Media
I was reading on Slashdot a discussion about iTune 4.8 and its new capability to purchase videos from the iTunes Music Store, when I read two things that jus...
Fascinated by Melding of Ethnic Music Styles
I’m fascinated by the melding of various ethic music styles with contemporary music, in particular, when the mix includes some middle-eastern or central-euro...
Music and Double Moral Hazard
A very interesting article that has a different take on why the tussle of people who file share vs. the Music Industry. What I like is that it is taking a “b...
Reciprocity
Musings of a Trust Architect: The Origins of Self-Sovereign Identity
ABSTRACT: The idea of Self-Sovereign Identity emerged in 2016, but it has inspirations dating back centuries. This article explores the historic evolution...
Paying for Favors
One of the common practices in the independent movie industry is to share favors to keep production costs low. I loan you use of a camera and you later do so...
My Advice to Social Networking Services
I have now had CEOs of three different social networks send me emails asking me to compare Orkut to their service. I’ve not had a chance to dig deeply into g...
Conference
Post RSA Conference Wrapup
I spent most of last week at the RSA Conference in San Francisco.
History
The Path to Self-Sovereign Identity
Today I head out to a month-long series of events associated with identity: I’m starting with the 22st (!) Internet Identity Workshop next week; then I’m sp...
Some History of SSL Security Reviews
Regarding the Heartbleed bug, SSL and TLS vendors used to require code security reviews before CAs would accept certificate requests from that implementation.
Tracing the Evolution of Social Software
The term ‘social software’, which is now used to define software that supports group interaction, has only become relatively popular within the last two or ...
Heartbleed
Some History of SSL Security Reviews
Regarding the Heartbleed bug, SSL and TLS vendors used to require code security reviews before CAs would accept certificate requests from that implementation.
Commons
Musings of a Trust Architect: The Origins of Self-Sovereign Identity
ABSTRACT: The idea of Self-Sovereign Identity emerged in 2016, but it has inspirations dating back centuries. This article explores the historic evolution...
A Revised “Ostrom’s Design Principles for Collective Governance of the Commons
A Revised “Ostrom’s Design Principles for Collective Governance of the Commons” The traditional economic definition of “the commons” are those resources th...
10 Design Principles for Governing the Commons
In 2009, Elinor Ostrom received the Nobel Prize in Economics for her “analysis of economic governance, especially the commons”.
RWOT
Blockchain Commons in 2024
I regularly post all of my “Musings of a Trust Architect” to both here and Blockchain Commons, but other posts at Blockchain Commons may be of interest as we...
Musings of a Trust Architect: The Origins of Self-Sovereign Identity
ABSTRACT: The idea of Self-Sovereign Identity emerged in 2016, but it has inspirations dating back centuries. This article explores the historic evolution...
Self-Sovereign Identity: 5 Years On
ABSTRACT: On April 26, 2016, Christopher released “The Path to Self-Sovereign Identity”, a foundational article on SSI. Five years on, self-sovereign iden...
Media
Apple, AirVideo, and Immersive vs Ambient Media
I was reading on Slashdot a discussion about iTune 4.8 and its new capability to purchase videos from the iTunes Music Store, when I read two things that jus...
Committing to Vonage
In September I signed up for Vonage, a VoIP (Voice-over-IP) service that using SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) that allows you to connect using the net to ...
Sexism
Sexism, Social Software & the Blogospher
A fascinating series of blog entries shows the promise and peril of social software and Blogs as a medium in a male-dominated technocracy:
iPhone
Back to Top ↑Language
Deep Context Shared Languages
I consider one of my missions in life to be to “create tools that allow people to communicate about complexity”. There are many problems to address and many...
Creating Shared Language and Shared Artifacts
We live in a world of conversation, of language; all full of words. Mastery of language requires learning the meanings of thousands of words. The average na...
Blog Action Day
BGIedu Students Post for Blog Action Day on Food
Today is Blog Action Day, where each year a topic is chosen and bloggers and activists worldwide write about that topic in their blogs or post about it on T...
Blog Action Day on Climate Change
Late this evening while catching up on my feeds, I saw for the first time that this year’s Blog Action Day is on the topic of Climate Change. This event is s...
Persuasion
Persuasion, Influence, Bias, Intuitive Errors
Motivated reasoning, social influence: simplicity, perceived self-interest, incongruity, confidence, empathy
Matt Taylor
Deep Context Shared Languages
I consider one of my missions in life to be to “create tools that allow people to communicate about complexity”. There are many problems to address and many...
Manage the Environment, Not the People
Matt Taylor Photo In the late 80’s I met Matt Taylor at a Mac user group event, and we became friends. We eventually became reciprocal apprentices — he learn...
Work
Underestimating the Long Term
I recently ran into a quote that rang true to me. It is from Bill Gates in “The Road Ahead”, but is wise enough that it may have older origins than that:
A Relationship With Work
I am a lifetime entrepreneur. Even when working for large organizations I find my approach to be entrepreneurial (what my mentor Gifford Pinchot would call I...
Signatures
Musings of a Trust Architect: A Layperson’s Intro to Schnorr
ABSTRACT: Schnorr signatures have been a long time coming, but now that they’re finally here, they open up broad new cryptographic frontiers, including the i...
Smarter Signatures: Experiments in Verifications
By Christopher Allen & Shannon Appelcline ABSTRACT Technologies like the Web of Trust and PKI lay the foundation for identity on the internet: they ma...
Legislation
Private Key Disclosure: A Needless Threat to Rights and Assets
UPDATE 2023-02-16: This bill has passed the Wyoming Assembly 41-13, a day after the Wyoming Senate passed it by a vote of 31-0. If Wyoming Governor Mark Gord...
Principal Authority: A New Perspective on Self-Sovereign Identity
This summer, we’ve been iterating through an article intended to talk about the success that Blockchain Commons has had working with the Wyoming legislature ...
Data Minimization
Musings of a Trust Architect: Least & Necessary Design Patterns
ABSTRACT: The principles of least privilege and least authority are core computer security principles that can minimize attacks. Not only can they be exte...
Musings of a Trust Architect: Data Minimization & Selective Disclosure
I have been struggling for a while to communicate my framing of definitions for Data Minimization and Selective Disclosure, which are privacy-focused data-pr...
Cliques
Musings of a Trust Architect: Open & Fuzzy Cliques
Digital communities are collections of individual entities that are connected together. They can be modeled as graphs, with the individuals being nodes and t...
Musings of a Trust Architect: Edge Identifiers & Cliques
Since the mid-1990s, I’ve been advocating for the creation of secure digital infrastructures that protect human rights, civil liberties, and human dignity on...
Micropayments
Comics, The Right Number, Bit Pass, and the Future of Micropayments
Scott McCloud, a very smart comic book artist and author of the fantastic book “Understanding Comics” has been trying for a number of years to both reinvent ...
Uncanny Valley
Robots Dancing in the Uncanny Valley, Knowledge Navigator and UI Design
At a recent unofficial gathering of Future Salon’ers, there was a discussion about a demonstration of four robots doing a japanese fan dance to music (I thin...
Robots
Robots Dancing in the Uncanny Valley, Knowledge Navigator and UI Design
At a recent unofficial gathering of Future Salon’ers, there was a discussion about a demonstration of four robots doing a japanese fan dance to music (I thin...
Home
Converting to TypePad Complete
For the last few weeks I’ve been moving my blog from Blogger Pro over to the TypePad service, after a frustrating try to get WordPress to work. While I was a...
Reputation
My Advice to Social Networking Services
I have now had CEOs of three different social networks send me emails asking me to compare Orkut to their service. I’ve not had a chance to dig deeply into g...
Web of Trust
Hand-Crafting My FOAF
While at eTech, I attended a number of “social software” sessions. One thing I heard was a persistent call from folk like Marc Canter for all the vendors to ...
Politics
Politics with Respect
This is not a political blog, but like most bloggers I’ve been indundated with various discussions about the Bush Administration, Michael Moore, Red vs. Blue...
Rankings
Systems for Collective Choice
By Christopher Allen & Shannon Appelcline
Ranking
Collective Choice: Competitive Ranking Systems
By Christopher Allen & Shannon Appelcline
Investment
On Being an Angel
In the last month or so I’ve received a number of links to Life With Alacrity as a venture capital blog, and to myself as a venture capitalist.
Hackathon
Back to Top ↑Uncertainty
Cultural Dimensions
Geert Hofstede™ Cultural Dimensions
Creative Commons
Creative Commons Posts “Defining Noncommercial” Report
Last year I participated in a survey followed up by a focus group on the topic of Noncommercial Use, in particular around the context that about 2/3rds of t...
Licenses
Creative Commons Posts “Defining Noncommercial” Report
Last year I participated in a survey followed up by a focus group on the topic of Noncommercial Use, in particular around the context that about 2/3rds of t...
Passwords
Password Best Practices
Passwords are very important for maintaining your online identity, because they ensure that no one else can access your accounts and do things that you would...
Climate Change
Blog Action Day on Climate Change
Late this evening while catching up on my feeds, I saw for the first time that this year’s Blog Action Day is on the topic of Climate Change. This event is s...
Favors
Paying for Favors
One of the common practices in the independent movie industry is to share favors to keep production costs low. I loan you use of a camera and you later do so...
Bias
Persuasion, Influence, Bias, Intuitive Errors
Motivated reasoning, social influence: simplicity, perceived self-interest, incongruity, confidence, empathy
Environment
Manage the Environment, Not the People
Matt Taylor Photo In the late 80’s I met Matt Taylor at a Mac user group event, and we became friends. We eventually became reciprocal apprentices — he learn...
Hypercard
Tools for Ignition & HyperCard’s 25th Anniversary
Over my lifetime I have encountered a number of “tools for ignition” — a phrase which I use to describe innovative products that have empowered people and cr...
Triads
Dyads & Triads — The Smallest Teams
(By Christopher Allen with Elyn Andersson and Shannon Appelcline) Two years ago, the Bainbridge Graduate Institute (www.BGI.edu) faculty gathered to radic...
Dyads
Dyads & Triads — The Smallest Teams
(By Christopher Allen with Elyn Andersson and Shannon Appelcline) Two years ago, the Bainbridge Graduate Institute (www.BGI.edu) faculty gathered to radic...
Stories
Back to Top ↑Planning
Underestimating the Long Term
I recently ran into a quote that rang true to me. It is from Bill Gates in “The Road Ahead”, but is wise enough that it may have older origins than that:
Freedom to Fail
Freedom to Fail & Freakonomics podcast “Failure is Your Friend”
I often speak about “Freedom to Fail” as an essential element of success for all sizes of systems and processes such as a hackathons, ecosystems, corporate c...
Consensus
Back to Top ↑Collective Governance
A Revised “Ostrom’s Design Principles for Collective Governance of the Commons
A Revised “Ostrom’s Design Principles for Collective Governance of the Commons” The traditional economic definition of “the commons” are those resources th...
Participatory Ecosystem
Defining “Participatory Ecosystem” — Grow the Pie, Not Slice It!
A blog on social software, collaboration, trust, security, privacy, and internet tools by Christopher Allen. Defining “Participatory Ecosystem” — Grow the P...
Agility
Musings of a Trust Architect: Problems of Cryptographic Agility
ABSTRACT: Cryptographic agility was once seen as a desirable goal for computer security, but increasingly problems such as high costs, bad interactions, a...
Open Source
Musings of a Trust Architect: Open Silicon
ABSTRACT: Drawing inspiration from Ken Thompson’s seminal work, Reflections on Trusting Trust, there are deep-rooted challenges in establishing trust in c...
Open Silicon
Musings of a Trust Architect: Open Silicon
ABSTRACT: Drawing inspiration from Ken Thompson’s seminal work, Reflections on Trusting Trust, there are deep-rooted challenges in establishing trust in c...
Musings
Musings of a Trust Architect: The Origins of Self-Sovereign Identity
ABSTRACT: The idea of Self-Sovereign Identity emerged in 2016, but it has inspirations dating back centuries. This article explores the historic evolution...
Living Systems Theory
Musings of a Trust Architect: The Origins of Self-Sovereign Identity
ABSTRACT: The idea of Self-Sovereign Identity emerged in 2016, but it has inspirations dating back centuries. This article explores the historic evolution...
Self-Sovereign Computing
Self-Sovereign Computing
ABSTRACT: Self-Sovereign Computing is a transformative paradigm designed to empower individuals to take command of their digital journey and to uphold t...
Verifiable Credentials
Musings of a Trust Architect: Least & Necessary Design Patterns
ABSTRACT: The principles of least privilege and least authority are core computer security principles that can minimize attacks. Not only can they be exte...
Schnorr
Musings of a Trust Architect: A Layperson’s Intro to Schnorr
ABSTRACT: Schnorr signatures have been a long time coming, but now that they’re finally here, they open up broad new cryptographic frontiers, including the i...
Social Media
Kathy Sierra of Serious Pony on Trolls
I don’t like forwarding negative topics on social networks such as Facebook, largely because of an internal intuition that has since been confirmed scientifi...
Countries Learning to Manipulate Social Media
“Forward Casting” Trust Services from 1988
Managing your Social Graph with Google+ [Google Plus]
With Google+ almost two weeks into its test phase, conversation about this new social network service seems to be going in circles.
In Seoul for the Social Web
Flames: Emotional Amplification of Text
I’ve been a moderator/host/forum leader for various bulletin boards and other online communities since the early 1980s; first on CompuServe, later on GEnie...
Extrapolative Hostility in the Online Medium
Extrapolate To infer an unknown from something that is known; conjecture. -- The Random House College Dictionary
Annoyed by Zero Degrees
As I’m studying social network software right now, I consider it my job to try many of the hundred some odd social networks out there right now.
My Advice to Social Networking Services
I have now had CEOs of three different social networks send me emails asking me to compare Orkut to their service. I’ve not had a chance to dig deeply into g...
Confirmed Email Privacy Hole at Orkut
Another Orkut user and I have confirmed a privacy hole in Orkut whenever you send a message to someone via Orkut.
Followup on Orkut
I’ve read of emails, Orkut messages, and blog postings since my post yesterday, so I thought I would share some with you.
Insecurity at Orkut
Like many others, I’ve been paying attention to Orkut in the last couple of weeks. I’ve answered more requests to be “friends” on Orkut then I have of any of...
Too Many Social Network Services
In the last few weeks I’ve gotten more invitations to friends via Orkut then I have from all the other social networks I’ve tried out. I currently have 61 fr...
Joi on Identity and Size of Networks
Joi Ito’s Web: Blogger’s block, collapsing facets and the number 150 offers some insights on two different topics:
Socialization in Online Games
I’ve been playing around with a number of so-called Social Software/Social Networking sites for about six months.
Followup to “Evaluating Social Network Services”
I’ve received a number of replies and pointers after posting my Evaluating Social Network Services here last Tuesday. Here are a few:
Enterprise Social Networking
InfoWorld has an article by Ephraim Schwartz called “Social Networking Targets the Enterprise” that says that corporations are looking to use social networki...
Chinese Social Network
The Social Software Weblog discusses DragonVenture Invests in Social Networking Platform in China:
Evaluating Social Network Services
After a week where I met a number of bloggers and social network / social software people, I decided to try to update my various networks at Ryze, Tribe.Net,...
Conserving Social Capital
A followup to my post yesterday Social Software – Problems & the Definition of “Friends”, I saw in Scott Lofteness’ blog a reference to David Hornick’s V...
Social Software – Problems & the Definition of “Friends”
I’ve been playing around with a number of so-called Social Software/Social Networking sites for about six months.
Political Action and Visual Media
I’ve been playing around with a number of so-called Social Software/Social Networking sites for about six months. I’m currently on Ryze with supposedly 13 ‘...