Persona Prime

or is it that bigggg overhanging rock in the background that everyone knows if gonna fall but no one wants to admit it?

I am talking about the complete lack of change management in government for all this “transparency.”  Okay so in my little echo chamber all we ever hear about is how awesome and easy transparency is.  Well guys, I am from Texas.  I have relatives and friends that are from that other side…  remember them?  the 46% that lost?  well many of them aren’t so sure about this “transparency thing.”

The Texan presenters at the transparency conference we did in Austin Texas on May 15th (with Vivek Kundra and Bill Bradley) were a good illustration of this divide.

All the other side sees is a bunch of reckless change happening. They are all just sitting around wondering when they are going to get hurt by this.  They express concerns over privacy and security.

And they are all waiting for us to screw up so they can say we told you so.  And um I can’t blame them…

I mean where is the training?  Where is the change management?  We are doing some big stuff here and we are poised to make serious mistakes and I see no prelim work being done to prevent this.  Where are the best practices in open govt documents?  All I see are “I want” lists.  I have not seen us doing anything serious to ally their fears.

Do not get me wrong, I am seriously happy about all the change that is happening.  I mean I was wanting it 5 yrs ago when that 46% was 51% and everyone told me I was nuts (even those that are on our side now.)

But I am frustrated that I can’t get support on the change management side of things.  The training that all the normal people in govt need to adapt to the new way of things.  All the bureaucrats and such the “webees” as in we be still here when you be gone (because your candidate is no longer in office.)  These people are typically nonpartisan at heart and we need to win them over.  But we won’t until we adapt to their language. We need explain our new processes and why they exist and how they work and why they are so darn nifty.

oh yea and um at least publically defining those processes would be a good starting point (hint hint.)

I know budgets are tight.  Mine is too (since I have been unemployed since Feb.) but we need to prioritize better.  And if we don’t “sharpen the saw” we will all lose!  I want this change to be permanent something that does not unravel at the next changing of the guard.  If that means spending a bit extra to do it properly… let’s do it … please?

The main reason I have finally given in to blogging publicaly is the same reason I started privately 6 years ago.

I wanted a somewhat accurate record of my thoughts.  It’s sad that in a way negativity has caused me to blog but it is true.  When I started my personal blog 6 years ago it’s because I was on the edge of my divorce and had realized I had done very little self reflection which caused me to make life decisions that were not core to my state of being.  I wanted a more accurate reflection of self for my self and I wanted my friends perspectives to help keep me balanced.  Livejournal (Brad Fitzpatrick) – thank you so much for providing that!

I have watched my concepts and ideas be misunderstood most of my life.  Sometimes I have had them understood too well and used for bad reasons.  So this year I have committed myself to blogging more.  One thing that makes it hard to blog professionally is that I do not consider myself by any stretch of the imagination to be a writer.  I am a talker.  I have always been a talker (I can SEE some of y’all nodding to this right now!)  I am afraid of being judged for my writing…

It’s hard the part of my identity that I am the most attached to is “Silona is smart.”  And I hate doing anything that could possibly negatively effect that outcome.  It is way I held back on wikis at first and putting up incomplete work for fear of looking “dumb”  or just simply “not as smart as I thought she was…”

But then I found people misremembering what I said.  Especially in regards to my transparent legislation project that I designed in 2004.  And that has made me very unhappy.  I came up with the idea of documenting things on a paragraph by paragraph level using a unique identifier back then.  I came up with having atomic pieces of data that I could use the “connect the dots” tool on.  I can even tell you what specifically inspired me (theyworkforyou.com in 2004.)  I had the idea of creating a free open source social network that i could give away to all the NPO’s so they could create a mesh network of credible identities so that you could trust that paragraph level documentation and the connections made btn those pieces of data.

And yet… i have convios with people that I talked with that had decided what I was creating 6 yrs ago was a “calendar tool.”  That makes me very sad.  True, I did have Brandi Clark’s Ecowise Network that wanted a calendar tool (though could fit on the mesh net) at a codeathon in 2006 but was not even a serious end goal of mine.

So here I am at a crux point.  I am considering moving out of open government and into Open Banking.  I have a business plan from two and half years ago on how I want to kill FICO and I am creating a list of open banking best practices.  Perhaps even create a new bank…  it’s a big dream.  But that is always the way I have done it.  For good or bad.  I did dream up and do a demo of the Voter Vault in 94-96.  I am not even going to mention the gaming ideas… I did envision in 2004-05 some of the pieces of transparent government that are being put into place now.  Back then I can’t tell you how many times people told me I was insane this was the year Bush became pres for the second time.

So here I go again.  Come join me on the ride?

If you are – let me know you are here?  that was the best part of LiveJournal – all my friends’ input inspired me to keep up with writing…  even if your note is just a “hey nifty”

I think we could all take a few lessons from a sub culture I find interesting and kinda view myself as being on the periphery of…

hipsters

As much as you might be annoyed by their inclusive disgruntled nature.  It is there for a reason.  The only generation that has been marketed to more is the next one.  Their reaction is to be inclusive – they don’t listen to music unless it come thru their social network.  They purposely move from network to network to avoid “losers.”  Often late adopter and when they start getting spammed…

So marketing people are at a loss as to how to advertise to them.  Not they they can’t be – but you better speak their language.

So let’s take a few tips from this group:

lie on surveys

switch identities on purpose to screw with marketers

create diverse identities to make you hard to track (and keep moving)

and the best one – IGNORE ADS and promise to actually do the opposite of those ADs.

So yea – the apathy can be annoying – but acknowledge the cause and perhaps you can also gain some appreciation for this sometimes misaligned group.

So once upon a time…

I created very complex schemas.  I did Databases to 4th or even 5th level normalization.  Breaking it of course when needed for speed but always starting out “clean”  then profiling once I had the actual data to optimize for performance.  And if any one wants to (stupidly) compete on that level… I did EDS style systems with all the funky military codes.  And sometimes, I had to deal with  people that make it so complex to where a monster was a 27 level table join.

I understand complexity.  I understand the basic, sometimes biological, need for it.  Yes I used to sort my closet and room obsessively: clothes from shorter to longer while shoes underneath ran in the opposite direction.

When we all started doing computer stuff 20+ years ago, this was completely necessary and was a good thing.  But things have changed.  It used to be we were programming robots on how to cross the street.  We used robots because it was all we had and we could automate them.  But robots,  well robots are dumb.  Sorry I love robots too but they are only as good as we can directly tell them to be.  Instead now we have people.

We don’t have to tell people how to cross the street.  They won’t read those instruction manuals.  For people, we put up a great big red sign that says STOP.  That makes them aware of red means danger I should look around access and go on from there.

These new online community groups, need the same.  They do not need strict complex schemas.  They were break them – even if they understand them.  Think normal vocabulary and young people eg urban dictionary.   I don’t blame them honestly.  I also don’t care if your stuff breaks because of it.  I needed to break it – it DIDN’T FIT.

Make things to stretch and break.  Make things flexible. Make things simple.

We are creating for people not robots now.

Yes this is why I am a huge fan of microformats.org they are doing a great job of bridging that gap.

o yea and I’m with Jimmy Wales – I hate the term “crowdsourced”  implies lack of intelligence and implies business resource.  I also prefer Community Created.

I think Social media Monitoring and data visualizations on the individual will be key to people learning how to take more ownership of their data.

Once they see visualizations of all their data and how it is used… they will become more conscious.  I do sincerely believe google did us a favor by making people see the tip of the iceburg in regards to all the data that could be instantly available on them.

We need more tools like this for awareness issues alone!

things like:
Context of organizations joined
Identity pooling issue (esp when wrong)
Context of commentary
Your “commerical” context identity
Swarm marketing and surround marketing
Behavioral profiling
Social identity mapping who you know and who knows you

Google, my dear, you know I love you. I have been pimping out your tools since I first stumbled upon your Stanford page in 97 when I was doing SEO for a living. I even told my mom about you before you were on salon.com…

And I do know your motto of “don’t be evil” but do you realize you are teaching people bad habits in regards to giving away data ownership?

See I know that you expire data, and do much to anonymize data, and try to protect privacy of the individual. But I only know this because I personally know many google employees.  Those dear souls comfort my worried paranoid brain by explaining some internal processes to me.

But see I worry about the “thought crime” becoming a reality from the huge amounts of social behavior collected.

Though I do things like use google latitude. How do I justify such things?

Because you let me control it. I decide who sees it. I can set it to a location (lying maybe but eh…) While I don’t know what ATT does with this data ( I mean for all I know they are still handing it over to GW even though he isn’t president anymore.)  This tool could be used as an amazing lesson to people (look at the data Sandy Pentland at MIT media lab is gathering!)

My request is this… could you make people more aware of their data ownership? Could you make them aware that even though you guys aren’t Evil… that other sites out there collecting information MIGHT be?

please be a bit more public about your policies

ask others to also be more aware

teach people to fish – rather than giving them a fish?

we need things to illustrate transparent equitable standards for open data… can I help?  I won’t charge too much

I think the biggest current barrier to creating equitable relationships btn shared data in social networks btn the customers has to do with the contracts.  I mean B2B relationships wouldn’t put up with this all or nothing behavior.  So we have to fix this before a mesh of Social Net’s can occur.

Most contracts currently on the cloud are all or nothing arrangements.  Therefore people accept contracts that this non lawyer views as unreasonable and often enforceable… Simply because they have no option. They typically give up ALL RIGHTS to their data (please please post links here to any that don’t! as I would love to say THANKS!)

I do think we need an organization ala Creative Commons/eTrust to police these businesses.  ~4 yrs ago I registered wetheusers.org in anticipation of such issues occurring. I just wish I could clone myself (and grant myself $20Mi) to pursue this idea too!

People only become aware of these severe inequalities when something fails on a social level say Kodak decides to delete all the data… This will happen more as more businesses on the Cloud fail.  That data means more to the individual at that point than it does to the business.  So deleting is the easy thing to do and fiscally makes sense for the business.

It seems that people only see the social contracts that are broken btn them and the organizations.  They do not notice the other forms of lack of control over their data…  Like Facebook and Beacon, people don’t care UNTIL this data is reflected back to their friends.  Then they care.  This doesn’t make sense from a data ownership point of view.  That is because we are short sighted creatures and few understand databases, data mining, and social behavioral metrics.  They cannot see this reflection and I am as guilty as the rest of them.  I also hope that society will take care of this issue.  But I worry and wonder what our “star of david” will be if will are not observant.

I would tentatively like to propose 3 settings for the contracts

1. Transparent – All sharing ON CC enabled
2. Paranoid – All sharing OFF only to members of friendlist explicitly granted?
3. most popular settings- in the middle – not sure here… um Copyright all right reserved?

Maybe the Social Net’s or other products on the cloud can give different levels of features to encourage people to choose transparent…  but really the big thing that I would point out is that the most necessary piece is to be OPEN about the data being collected.  I did issue this challenge to Mark Hindsbo at Microsoft for the new cloud they are creating.  They have the ability and power to do it right.  I hope society will also reward them for doing so…

I know these need work but I still think it is a good starting point of discussion. having met the attorney at several of these businesses they are looking for guidance too.  Businesses are become wise to the fact that people often lie in inequitable relationships…

So how did I get here?  this concept of mutual ownership of data.  To be honest I did not get there from the perspective of the individual.  I got here because I wanted to figure out how to create a mesh of social nets so that I could have multiple personas.

The big piece is getting groups that control the Social nets to share the data.  I had to create something so that competitive groups would share data.  That is when I realized

business 2 business

org 2 org

business 2 client

and org 2 patron and even person to person

were all the same issue.  Setting up a TRUST relationship and keeping that balanced.  To do that mutual ownership must be acknowledged then maybe we can begin to negotiate what might be an equivalent relationship to create that trust.

Trusting without recourse… isn’t very smart in business though as people we do it naturally (and I think it is why we are losing our data left and right and suffering the advertising overload consequences.)  good fences make good neighborhoods.  good contracts make good business partners just by SETTING EXPECTATIONS.

I honestly believe that a mesh of Federating Social Nets cannot exist without this mutual ownership of data.  How else do we get Businesses and organization to share data?

Mike Neuenschwander wrote an awesome blog post about the equivalence issue – and explains it better than I in business terminology.

He calls it the law of relational symmetry.  I should state here too that one of my top five movies is “Brazil.”  Also Princess Bride, Dune (6hr version NOT TV), Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, and The Fifth Element.  But that did not bias me to his article

Sometimes I am upset that we do not learn to barter in this country.  I think this aspect of figuring out the relational symmetry of ownership of data would be more intuitive if we realized – Data is money therefore negiogate cash for its release!

the most basic problem in social nets today ( and actually MOST data)

is that it is rare that data is actually owned by one party.  It is typically owned by at least two (see my previous example of friendship in social nets)

So this mutual ownership – this “child” data has responsibilities.  The problems typically occur when inequalities exist.  Typically I think most problems today are because of the fact that one entity believes they are the sole owner of the data.  For example, Facebook and Beacon,  they believed that purchase data was theirs to do as they pleased with it.  The funny thing is people were/are foolishly happy with letting facebook gather it.  The only became unhappy when facebook used it foolishly by revealing purchases to their peers.   Then many left or threatened to leave if facebook didn’t fix the issue.  Perfectly illustrating the joint ownership of that data.

So the normal facebook data as potentially as useful as it maybe isn’t an extreme example of inequality.  I think banks and Credit cards are an even better example.  That shared bank account  they view the data to be theirs.  When they do the security threat analysis they do not factor in YOUR cost as the individuals if your identity is stolen?  If they did view the data as mutual, they would need to add that to the equation.  Then there would be accountability for that data and banks could more easily be held legally accountable for their actions.  Nothing better than a mob of hundreds of thousands pissed off and filing a law suit of identity theft.

So how do we deal with these issues of inequality of risk in regards to this mutually owned data?  well for that we need to turn to the law.  First contracts…. (hello Lessig are you reading this?)  We need a standard of mutual data ownership – a contract to create first the acknowledgment of shared data and secondly to balance the inequality of responsibility (perhaps thru lawsuits not sure what this looks like.)

Though honestly I think the biggest issues is people’s inherent lack of awareness in regards to these inequalities…  Google has done them the public a favor in my opinion by making their transparency obvious in a social way.  Facebook’s mistakes as well.  Though I do know Google trying to protect people’s data – at the same time I am pissed because they teach BAD HABITS in regards to sharing.

And to those (I know you are reading this) that claim “I am transparent on the net!  I have nothing to hide!”  I ask…

So where’s that nekkid pic of you on the net?  Where are your bank account records?  Where are your medical records?

I don’t know anyone that is completely transparent except maybe the invisible man…

Crisiscamp was big fun but now my brain is full of interesting projects.

Some possible ones are:
Crisispreparedness Badges for Facebook
1) It would inspire people to become educated in regards to crisis preparedness. Perhaps even having them fulfill specific tasks.
2) it would educate people’s friends and hopefully inspire them to train or do preparedness tasks
3) it would provide a list of trained people and their contact info to the crisis organizers

Creating an Emergency Tech Corp of responders
w Google, Microsoft and Yahoo and Burners without Borders.
The head of the LA fire Dept invited them down in the Fall for first hand training and use cases.

Codeathon
doing FOSS software for crisis handling and preparedness

and the craziest one…
Traveling Instant WIFI
like an RV w a gennie that has a satellite hookup that could provide instant wifi to all wifi enabled phones and computers.

a dictionary of crisis terminology
seeded with folkonomies from google or amazon
since common vocab seemed a severe issue (to me at least)

Yep it was a fun weekend!