Persona Prime

Hmm was pondering this… how does a person that did so much work with “big companies”  and is really good at lobbying republican’s on technical issues get this tag line?

Well it isn’t what you think… it is not a rebellion.

I see the world in patterns.  I watch things interweave.  I have a HARD time writing papers that are longer than 5-10 pages.  It is because I do not see the world very linearly.  I do see the world as a multi dimensional mesh of connections with little electrical energies surging in many directions at once. (yea I am sure that is from some Sci-fi show I saw as a child.)

Because of this I see hierarchies as fluid.  If I can figure out a way to gain access without the traditional channels.  I will do so.  I normally get my ideas across. Though I have found it also means I rarely get paid… C’est la vie.

I don’t get foiled often.  The only way is to completely lock down your network.  It is sad when a group does do this.  it guarantees an echochamber effect.  Or an emporer’s new clothes reality…  And that makes me worry for them.

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!

This is my favorite presentation i have given so far and wanted to see how my new slideshare.net widget was working… so here we go

I can’t believe it is 2 and half years since I gave this presentation!

So here I am working on my Federated Social network concept for a presentation in DC next week. And Again I find I am not original…

See the way I do things is I come up with an idea and then I look for stuff to justify what I think “feels right.” Yea sorry it’s just how my backassward brain thinks.

Why do I do it – backwards? I am unknown and lack in reputation. So no one believes what I say unless I can prove it. So I cheat and use others reputation points to prove my concept

So here I am falling in love with Feynman again. And As I am researching the concepts about my peer review process, I find some other amazing gems…

like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Popper
this equation makes me happier than I can ever explain!
PS_1 -> TT_1 -> EE_1 -> PS_2
“In response to a given problem situation (PS1), a number of competing conjectures, or tentative theories (TT), are systematically subjected to the most rigorous attempts at falsification possible. This process, error elimination (EE), performs a similar function for science that natural selection performs for biological evolution. Theories that better survive the process of refutation are not more true, but rather, more “fit”—in other words, more applicable to the problem situation at hand (PS1)”

an equation for evolution of ideas (and well evolution period)

which then leads me to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarski%27s_Indefinablity_Theorem and Tarski’s “semantic theory of truth”!

yea – my brain is happy and feeling validated…

now to work on my wallet

So I was talking the other day to Mark Hindsbo, the GM of Evangelists at Microsoft. He was basically wanted to talk about healing rifts with the OpenSource community. I was a bit blunt and brutal (but in a gentle way )

I said it is impossible for the OSS or FOSS communities to ever believe MS. I said the OSS shouldn’t and that MS should quit trying. The MS business model is broken in regards to OSS. The only way to change that trust is to change the business model.

The way to do that is focus on services. But maybe not services the way the FOSS community does…

I said if MS wants redemption it should look to the clouds…

hehehe or “the cloud.” One thing MS has always respected is the automony of its business clients and developers. I mean that is the point for such products as Small Business Server. Business clients are responsible for their own data and can act autonomously. This is NOT a stretch for people to believe in when it comes to MS’s reputation.

With the cloud’s current state, Data/autonomy is being taken away from people and businesses. Years ago I registered the URL WeTheUsers.org/com when I realized this was happening.  Though understand,  I have a gmail address. I am as guilty as the rest. But, at least I understand the tradeoff of convenience to secrecy.

So what can MS do? instead of Open Source… they should give people back their data. On MS cloud, Azure, they should do it right. Charge for services. Encrypt the data so the Feds can’t raid MS to get YOUR company/ind data.

and here is the BIGGIE

Be TRANSPARENT!

Let people SEE the data can be gathered and decide if they want to SELL it back to you for “free” services. This will KILL google. When people realize the scary psychometric data being gathered and presented back to them ESP companies… I think they will find it worth while to pay for services.

I mean most companies don’t even realize that they void NDAs when using gmail addresses. Make that transparent to them. Create accountability.
This isn’t just about security… it is about another form of transparency and that is about data.

People as a whole don’t care about code… they care about themselves and their data is a reflection of that.

yea… sometimes I’m evil. But they loved me at the Microsoft VIP party at SXSW.

At the very least we will be able to check the anonymizing functions the data is being put through… and make up our own minds as to what monolith to support.

Personally this gal with a libertarian bent likes it better when the monoliths are fighting it out.

Wow how to limit it to one…

The very first that springs to mind is my past mentor, Ellen Guon Beeman. She taught me everything I know in regards to project management. She’s the only gal I know that can consistently bring in complex gaming projects in on time and on budget.  She wrangles cats like no one else.

But somehow that didn’t seem techie enough… So second to mind is Limor Fried, adafruit.com, but that is because she is also known as “ladyada” and we met when I was dressed as the famous picture of Lady Ada As a steampunk party at SXSW.  Limor is also a faboo technologist and as a Open Source Hardware designer and manufacturer also qualifies as a serious geek!  but many are going to profile her…

So then I thought of circuit girl, Jeri Ellsworth ,who is doing some amazing projects with the Fatman ( a long time friend of mine.) But don’t know her as well and hasn’t had a huge impact on my life though her program is fun and she does many nifty things.

So I thought harder… I wanted something more fundamental.  Then I realized the woman that has influenced me the most in this arena by far is my mom, Dr Lynda Bonewald. She is a true scientist in every sense of the world. I often get so lost in my technological niches that I forget the basics. My mother taught me good science long before I knew who Feynman was. And her integrity is an amazing example to women everywhere.

Moms aren’t always shiny to us and often can be taken for granted… But I will never forget when I was 6yrs old and hanging out in her lab at Scripps in San Diego and she placed 6 test tubes filled w mysterious substances and had me figure out what they might be w my little notebook and a barrage of tests.  I learned the scientific process at a very early age.  Thanks for believing I would understand at such a young age and teaching me Mom.  Most parents wouldn’t give that much that early but you did and I forever am grateful for how much you challenged me.  Challenge in the true scientific meaning as in looking for possible truths and testing them (not a negative thing as others might see it.)

I love you Mom and thanks for making me into the geek that I am today even if I am no longer a traditional scientist I still use those most basic scientific tools you gave that little 6 yr old!

or how to write a one pager.

I have been pondering this concept for the past 5 yrs.  LoTV did a survey of legislators on 2004 and the top features they wanted was 1) a rss feed of all commentary on their legislation 2) one pagers from organizations and 3) the demographic data behind those one pagers.

They were not interested in the pure voter opinion demographic data.  That surprised me as I had assumed the thing that would be forefront in their minds was getting elected and being representative of their people.  That was not true of the elected officials.  Instead they were more interested in tools that would help them become statesmen again.  They want to facilitate win/win solutions between divergent groups of people.

This makes sense if you think about it… after all who wants to be a pure voting tool?  This could eventually can be done by computer (I argue could be done today if people cared.)  Instead they brought up an important point.  They want to be like Solomon and help people as well as being a good leaders.

This in the larger sense is comforting to me. When I created the survey I was very focused on feature set not an agenda.  The fact that this evolved out the discussions in an indicator of something more ingrained to their personality types.

So to help with Number 1 requested feature, I came up with the idea of creating permalinks on a paragraph by paragraph basis.  I will outline this in another post esp when the video presentation from SXSW as done by my Design intern Adrian Parsons is posted.  I call it making Government Web Citable!

This post is about the #2 and #3 requested features.  The one pagers and the demographic data behind those groups.  I created the concept of the C-wiki or consensus or common ground wiki.

It is a wiki with special tools so that it could mimic Robert’s rules of order.  The difference is people could not just vote but also rate their levels of satisfaction.  This way we could not only have a whitepaper but the demographic data.

1. Why certain decisions were made in the comments
2. % of satisfaction in the voting nubmers
3. Demographic data that participants choose to share

You could even target the tool towards Consensus of 80% satisfaction for close knit groups or 50% when you are simply looking for common group w diverse groups.

Hunter Ellinger has done different demos both in Drupal and Rails.  But I think truly we may need to look further than this.  I am instead looking at taking this open source code and providing a hosting service model that would be a revenue stream.

Some features I think would be necessary to make this work are

1. Facilitator tools both virtual and RL
2. Real life documentation features
3. Basic Process templates with ability to vary percentages of satisfaction
4. Ability to create your own process template
5. Ability to give others your vote
6. Ability to more heavily weight others votes like Board of directors (transparently of course)
7. Mesh Real life (RL) voting with other virtual participants

I can imagine having RL fishbowl style meetings with virtual participants.  Imagine the board of directors getting together in RL and broadcasting this to the membership and allowing the membership to also participate virtually.  If the numbers are too large, the virtual membership with similar goals can pool resources to gain visibility.  Perhaps they can elect their own representatives or just vote up a concept they like regardless of the person.

We could create one pagers from these and have all the background discussion and demographics documented.  This would be some phenomenal information in regards to decision making.  Of course we will fine tune the toolset with transparent algorithms.  I think unlike DIGG and other groups.  The group of people themselves owns their own data (hence this being a paid service.)  So they would be responsible for creating balance themselves in a transparent fashion.  That is the beauty of this solution.  Unlike other sites everyone participating here honestly want to know the general consensus.

I think the first and most simple Template we would create of this is a

Robert’s Rule of Order Wiki

and to target NPO (NonProfit Organizations) creating their Bylaws and other such documentation.