{"id":929,"date":"2012-05-21T10:35:59","date_gmt":"2012-05-21T17:35:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/upon2020.com\/?p=929"},"modified":"2012-05-18T16:21:16","modified_gmt":"2012-05-18T23:21:16","slug":"lid-openid-and-the-personal-cloud","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/upon2020.com\/blog\/2012\/05\/lid-openid-and-the-personal-cloud\/","title":{"rendered":"LID, OpenID and the Personal Cloud"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>When I started working on <a href=\"http:\/\/infogrid.org\/trac\/wiki\/LID\">LID<\/a> &#8212; the first proposal for a decentralized web identity system &#8212; about eight years ago, I did not just have a set of techie protocols in mind, but a technical architecture with social ramifications:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>people would grab a URL (say <code>http:\/\/upon2020.com\/<\/code>), and set up their personal web presence at that URL, under their own control, using the software they chose;<\/li>\n<li>that personal web presence could be queried by others (people and software) for information the owner would selectively make available; at that URL (e.g. <code>http:\/\/upon2o2o.com\/?lid-xpath=\/VCARD\/N\/GIVEN<\/code> would return my first name to those people who I decided could have it)<\/li>\n<li>when visiting a third-party site, I would leave a pointer to my web presence as a form of leaving a business case for &#8220;I have been here&#8221;. With a bit of crypto around it, that could easily be authenticated and used as single-sign on in a web login flow. The exact same protocol could also be used for API authentication.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Note the logical sequence: because I, as an individual, want to have control over my web presence, I do things in a particular way to accomplish my goals such as selective information sharing and single-sign-on. Because many individuals want to have the same control over their own web presence, a decentralized network of selective, identity-aware, secure, and privacy-protecting information sharing would emerge.<\/p>\n<p>Unfortunately what people mostly picked up from LID and then OpenID was the single-sign-on aspect, ignoring the decentralized &#8220;everybody owns their own web presence&#8221; aspect (which, of course, is the far more interesting one.) Perhaps it was too radical at the time. In a way, I pitched the Personal Computer to mainframe people who could not conceive of the use for a &#8220;personal&#8221; computer, but took some inspiration from the single-sign-on aspect, as if mainframe people ignored the invention of a personal computer but took inspiration from the design of its keyboard.<\/p>\n<p>The current way of thinking about internet identity is all about &#8220;big site with lots of users&#8221; (e.g. Google, Yahoo, Facebook). Their logical sequence of thought by its proponents was, and is: Because I (e.g. Google) want to enable my users to be able to log into other websites without requiring additional accounts, we design a protocol that does that, in a way that maximizes benefits for us as identity provider and our business partner relying parties, while not making it too hard for the user.<\/p>\n<p>Which is why <a href=\"http:\/\/openid.net\/\">OpenID<\/a> is so very different today from its roots and much more corporate in nature, why <a href=\"\/2011\/03\/the-death-of-user-centric-identity-for-now\/\">user-centric identity is dead<\/a>, and while almost all of us who helped start the movement dropped out over the years.<\/p>\n<p>But it seems we&#8217;re having a bit of a <a href=\"http:\/\/personal-clouds.org\/wiki\/Special:ListUsers\">reunion<\/a> these days, on the subject of <a href=\"http:\/\/personal-clouds.org\/\">Personal Clouds<\/a>. Perhaps the idea of cloud computing had to mature further before we could talk about user control over it. Perhaps Facebook, the most non-user-centric identity system ever, had to have a market capitalization of more than $100 billion first, making all its money off monetizing our information. But the signs are in the air, and because the world (and we) have progressed in the meantime, there&#8217;s a much better chance of success. I&#8217;ll write about it more from now on.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m excited again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When I started working on LID &#8212; the first proposal for a decentralized web identity system &#8212; about eight years ago, I did not just have a set of techie protocols in mind, but a technical architecture with social ramifications: people would grab a URL (say http:\/\/upon2020.com\/), and set up their personal web presence at&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"webmentions_disabled":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[58,23,60,65],"tags":[219],"class_list":["post-929","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-big_picture","category-cloud","category-digital_identity","category-personal","tag-personal-cloud","kind-"],"kind":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/upon2020.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/929","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/upon2020.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/upon2020.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/upon2020.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/upon2020.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=929"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"https:\/\/upon2020.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/929\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":950,"href":"https:\/\/upon2020.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/929\/revisions\/950"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/upon2020.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=929"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/upon2020.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=929"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/upon2020.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=929"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}