Liveblog: Outline for my keynote today at #idnz015

Liveblog:

Outline for my keynote today at #idnz015

Mon, May 18, 2015 at 3:36 AM by Doc Searls.

Outline for my keynote today at #idnz015

The conference: Enabling Digital Identity and Privacy in a Connected World. It's today and tomorrow, 18-19 May, at Te Papa in Wellington, NZ.
My title: Privacy is Personal.
- Props: a hammer, a nail and two pieces of wood. No slides.
1) Agency
- Tools fill that capacity. They give us agency, which is—
- The capacity to act with full effect in the world.
- We can't push a nail through a board with our bare hands. With a hammer we can. It is an instrument enlarges our agency.
2) Scale
- For industry
  - Mass everything
    - Manufacture
    - Distribution
    - Marketing
    - One-sided agreements
- For people, through tools such as hammers:
  - Personal
  - Social
- The Internet facilitates both
3) The Internet
- A virtual world co-existing with the physical one
  - It's new: just 20 years old
  - It's organized by protocols, just like civilization.
  - Protocols are manners. The Internet's protocols are end-to-end,
  - The Net is a giant zero. A world of ends. A second environment for people and organizations.
- We need new tools for this new world.
- We have industrial ones. We need personal ones. Especially ones for privacy.
4) Privacy
- Not controversial in the physical world
  - We are all wearing privacy technology called clothing. We live and work in places that support privacy.
  - We have had clothing and shelter for many millenia.
- Controversial in the Networked world because we don't have it.
  - The Net because it's still Eden.
  - We're walking around naked, and vulnerable
- Zuboff's laws:
  - What can be automated will be automated.
  - What can be turned into data will be turned into data.
  - In the absence of privacy protection, every technology that can be used for surveillance and control will be used for surveillance and control.
5) Delusions
- Eric Schmidt, in an interview:
  - "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place." If we followed that advice in the physical world, none of us would be here.
- The advertising business
  - Belief that we are buying something all the time.
  - Belief that there is no downside to wasting our time.
  - Belief that each of us can be fully known by machines.
  - Belief that being a customer is to be on a journey.
- IBM & the Big Data cabal:
  - They can know you better than you know yourself.
  - They don't need to deal with you as a human being. Their machines can do the work.
  - Humans are cattle. Their language makes this clear:
    - Target
    - Capture
    - Acquire
    - Manage
    - Control
    - Lock in
6) The real journey is public and private
- Public markets and private lives.
- See Estaban Kolksy's infinity loop. (e.g. here.)
- The delusional journey: always buying. Always in the public market.
- The real journey: always owning. Always private. Always in the orbit of personal agency.
7) Cluetrain
- HIstory
  - "The clue train stopped there four times a day for ten years but they never took delivery." (Silicon Valley epitaph)
  - 95 theses worked for Luther
  - Manifesto worked for Marx
  - Went up at Cluetrain.com in March 1999
  - Went viral online. Still is. Look up "cluetrain" or "#cluetrain."
  - Book came out in Januray 2000. Bestseller in 9 languages. Still sells.
- Most familiar line: "Markets are conversations"
- Most meaningful line: "we are not seats or eyeballs or end users or consumers. we are human beings and our reach exceeds your grasp. deal with it." This is the "one clue" (yes, it's called that) that galvanized us.
- That clue wasn't true. Still isn't, because our reach does not exceed their grasp. Zuboff was right.
8) VRM
- In 2006, when I started as a fellow at the Berkman Center, I created ProjectVRM, to make that clue true, by evangelizing development of tools that make each of us—
  - Independent.
  - Better able to engage. With our own tools. At scale.
- We now have many dozens of development projects, around the world. Especially strong in .NZ and .AU. Examples:
  - MyWave
  - Meeco
  - Onexus
  - Geddup
  - Welcomer
  - Flamingo
- How VRM supports personal agency
  - Data control (in personal clouds, vaults, lockers, management systems).
  - Terms each of us can assert, and have effect, at scale, anywhere.
  - Intentcasting.