just a lowly edtech geek, mumble mumble university of calgary
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I was asked to give a presentation for the From Courses to Dis/Course online conference last week, and chose the topic of identity as it relates to openness. My session, Identity in the Open Classroom, was a fun (for me, anyway) exploration of the issues, and I think served the purpose of framing discussion.
Here’s the [...]
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Relationships are more than artificial pigeonholes. Rex, at Savage Minds, compares Facebook (and by extension Web 2.0) identities and relationships to those of indigenous vs. colonial cultures.
Facebook subsumes face-to-face relationships, in other words, in a way similar to the way that governments subsume indigenous identities. Or at least the identities of Papua New Guinean ‘landowners’ that I study. In both cases, an institution identified people as being unambiguously one type or another for the purposes of granting them access to resources and certain types of moral recognition. I think many of the criticisms that people have made of the deforming effects of state recognition on indigenous people could in principle be applied to people on Facebook—although of course the stakes are infinitely lower in the case of Facebook.
and
Insofar as indigenous critiques of pathological state systems of recognition are a particular example of a more general criticism of the way that living breathing lifeworlds are formalized—or rather, how the living and breathing world has little solidified models of itself drifting around within it in complexly reflective ways. We might start thinking about the performative nature of these identities: how a new occasion to classify people as friends suddenly makes us rethink not just whether someone is a friend, but what that category means. Perhaps there will someday be computers with databases so massive and logic so fuzzy they will be able to intuit that I want Jim to see photos of my weekend hike, but not Sarah. But in the meantime perhaps we need someone to write a critique of the corrosive bureaucratic imagining of friendship that Facebook promotes. Or perhaps we need an expose of the way that its mechanisms are constantly being detourned by the communities that are constantly appropriating it.
The lens with which we view ourselves, and our relationships with others, colours our perception of both. If that lens imposes a bureaucratic structure, we pigeonhole people into appropriate boxes, without the fluidity and organic nature we might otherwise see.
I had a discussion with King Chung Huang and Paul Pival this morning, about one of King’s current research projects. He’s working on the topic of context and identity – what it would mean from both institutional and individual perspectives, if our digital identities and contexts were pulled out of the silos of Blackboard, email, [...]
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I’m connecting the dots between two otherwise unrelated items that were in my Google Reader inbox this morning.
Random Mind: USC Film Students Fight Back
Dave Tosh: Data Ownership
The first article is about students at USC Film School realizing that the copyright for their student films belongs to USC. Which means they can’t do things like post [...]
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OpenID appears to be gaining some momentum. It feels like the right approach to identity management – let individuals control their identity in a trusted way, rather than relying on federation through central brokers. Sun Microsystems just rolled out OpenID support for all of their employees. Stephen’s been talking about this kind of decentralized identity [...]
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I headed downtown this morning (waaaaay earlier than I'd have liked) to attend the Lexi.net Online Identity Conference. I was curious to see what an internet-related conference would look like in Calgary, having been involved in others elsewhere. I wore my NV '05 t-shirt, of course 
I got downtown too early – the buses out of Tuscany go straight downtown, but the last one passes my house at 6:45. So, I had some time to kill before and after registration. What to do… I know! A photo walk down Stephen Avenue Mall!
I wound up taking over 60 photos during the pre-sunrise twilight, and after the sun came up.
What was I talking about? Oh. Right. The conference. After frostbite set in my fingertips, I headed back to the Telus Conference Centre, grabbed some caffeine, and talked a bit with some other attendees, including Wired.com writer Regina Lynn, Aaron J. Seigo, Doug aka Dr. Tongue, and a bunch of others.
The first session was on privacy and anonymity, with some interesting links. Not sure it was aimed at the right audience, though.
After that, I went to Kirstin Darguzas' session on Blogging Your Identity. Kirstin is a professional "mommy blogger" and gave a really good talk on boundaries, online identities, and what it's like being a full time blogger (doesn't sound like as much fun as one would think).
Next up was Janine Warner, talking about Virtual Images – finding out what's available about you online, and how you can take control of it. Very interesting talk, with links to a few tools I hadn't heard of before. I gather her usual audience is more CXO-oriented, so some of the strategies may not be needed by us mere mortals (I'm not about to pay $120 for a company to research what's online about me – this blog likely does a good enough job of drowning out anything I don't know about )
During the lunch keynote session, Heather "Dooce.com" Armstrong told the back story of her blog, how she got fired (yeah, she deserved it 
) and how things are much better as a result. I was very interested in her descriptions of personnas and boundaries. What's off limits? What's fair game? She's much more willing to blog about her family than I am, which is fine since they seem to be relatively comfortable with it (aside from Jon's squirming at some of the stories). The lighting backdrop during her talk was mesmerizing/distracting, with fluid Fire and Ice rolling up and down the wall behind her and onto the ceiling. Very cool. But distracting.
Jon Armstrong gave a great presentation after lunch about Branding. He gave a an overview of the general process of branding (initially for companies, later for individuals, mostly about Apple ) Jon's pretty funny, and his Keynote skills were refreshing. Mostly a simplified Lessigian style presentation, marred only by the lack of a wireless controller.
I had to leave before the last session, but having chatted with Regina, I'm sure it was another good one. Sorry I had to leave early, Gina!
I was rather impressed with the conference. I was quite surprised at the international (well, binational) attendees. About half of the people I talked with were in town from the States just for the conference.
It had quite a different feel from a Northern Voice (this was much more formal/traditional) but was much more intimate than an NMC or WWDC. Not a bad balance. Maybe Calgary's ready for Northern Voice YYC? The venue would be completely wrong for that, though. No wireless, for one thing. No wireless? Really? WTF. Wait – I left the laptop at home anyway I just brought my camera and a little reporter-style notepad. A much better way to attend a conference.
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For some of our projects here at the TLC, we need to be able to manage identity information – traditionally, user accounts, groups, roles, etc… We’re taking a bit of time to think about a better way of implementing this, and how to use a flexible, distributed identity model.
I’ve been going through some web searches to find out what others are doing. The “version numbers” are loosely based on Dick Hardt’s descriptions (with apologies to him if I’ve misinterpreted what he was trying to say).
Any glaring omissions? I’ll be editing this post as I go along (I’ve got the info in our TLC wiki, but that’s behind an Identity 1.0 login)
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While Evan was “napping”, I took a few minutes to check in on my blog. Took a look at recent referrers and Technorati links, and found a reference to Tarina – a Finnish blog. Cool. So, I checked out the blog, and found a link to a very compelling presentation on “Identity 2.0″
Dick Hardt, founder and CEO of Sxip Identity, gave a keynote at OSCON 2005. Initially I was more interested in the description of his presentation style – described as “Lessigian”. I’d never heard this term before, so was curious. Turns out Lawrence Lessig uses a pretty kick-ass presentation style, with very simple slides in sync with his talk. No bullet points, just words (and occasional images) reinforcing what he’s saying.
Dick’s presentation was extremely interesting, partially because of the Lessigian style, partially because of the sense of humour, partially because of the content, and partially because the streaming technique used made me feel like I was right there with him in the audience.
I’ll be reviewing the presentation several times. Some of the concepts he touches on would apply just as easily to “learning objects” as to “identity” – silos vs. walled gardens vs. federation vs. open etc… I’ve also subscribed to Dick’s blog. I should have done that right after Northern Voice 2004, since Sxip was a sponsor and was/is doing some interesting stuff.
Oh, and I must be a little less mature than people give me credit for. I can’t stop giggling about someone named “Dick Hardt”. Grow up, D’Arcy… So, kids, it really does pay to check referrers to your blog. There’s no telling what little gems you’ll turn up!
Update: Looks like Sxip is about to roll out a new product/service/standard(?) for sharing identity across weblogs in an attempt to combat comment spam. The new tool is called “Sxore” – they have it running in beta on a handful of blogs, and it is scheduled to be available for WordPress and MovableType in the fall of 2005 – hey! that’s pretty soon!
Update 2: More info about the Lessig Style of Presenting.
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