Source: news.google.com
We have been in an era of digital feudalism for a quarter of a century.
The feudal system is a medieval construct: serfs work the land to create value, and landlords confiscate most of that value.
Today, instead of agricultural products, the asset class is data, created by us, but captured by digital owners like social networks and other Web2 applications. “Surfing the Internet” has become “serving the Internet,” with users providing intimate details of their lives for the Internet overlords to aggregate, expropriate, and monetize.
This is important, because personal data is not just the by-product of your work. It is the stuff of your identity in the digital age. It’s a digital version of you, remembering everything you did online, everyone you interacted with.
There are obvious problems with this arrangement. In particular, we can’t, we can’t use our own data to plan our lives. It is stored in other people’s silos, which we cannot access, but third parties like Cambridge Analytica can, often without our knowledge. In the meantime, we don’t enjoy any of the rewards of this use of third-party data, but we bear most of the risk and responsibility for its cleanup in the event our data is lost or misused by our digital overlords. And finally, we can’t make money from data ourselves, but instead are forced to watch companies get rich from these valuable assets.
The solution? self-sovereign identity
What each of us needs is a Digital Autonomous Identity (SSI), which is not granted or revocable by any central administrator and applicable in any context, in person and online, anywhere in the world.
This will be one of the key topics discussed at Web3 & Blockchain World (W3B) in Toronto on November 8-9, 2022. Business leaders from many countries will come together for two days to discuss how to harness the power of Web3 technologies. and blockchain. .
Here’s how a self-sovereign identity works: It starts with Web3, aka the Internet of Property, which supports the creation and custody of non-fungible identity tokens through which we control the rights to manage our own identity, access (and allow others to access) the data that make up our identity. We envision an identity commons, distributed and maintained by the people whose identities it protects, so that everyone’s incentives align and token holders participate in making rules about the preservation and use of the commons.
Several identity projects are working to provide these tools and capabilities. Here are a few:
Cardea is an open source, verifiable digital credential developed by Indicio and field-tested with SITA Aero on the island of Aruba, where travelers used the Cardea app to prove their COVID testing status at restaurants and other tourist locations.
MemberPass is an SSI solution, developed by credit union services organization Bonifii, that leverages Evernym’s verifiable credential technology. Protects members against identity theft and fraud without revealing any personal information.
Yoma (Youth Agency Marketplace) used Trinsic ID’s SSI specification to create verifiable digital résumés for young African job seekers.
freeing ourselves from our digital owners
The ultimate solution to digital identity must be independent of any corporation, government, or other third party, and beyond the whims of executives or bureaucrats. It must be built to outlive its users and assert its right to be forgotten. To be inclusive, it must be easy to use with a lightweight mobile interface and low-cost dispute resolution.
This transition will take time, and eventually, we expect Web2 organizations to win back the trust of those whose data they own in three ways.
The first involves governance. Businesses and government agencies need to define decision rights around their data and develop an accountability framework that governs how data is used by employees.
The second involves the cessation of the regular collection and storage of customer data from the Web2 world. In the meantime, it’s time for the tech giants to start completely wiping out their massive databases (after returning the records to customers), or migrating the data to distributed storage systems, such as IPFS, and handing control over to the customers.
The third way to rebuild trust involves cultivating new core competencies: the ability to work with large anonymous data sets rented to large numbers of people, all managed in a distributed and trust-minimizing fashion. It will flip the data analytics business model on its head and reward corporations for serving as data brokers on behalf of individuals.
The self-sovereign identity is one of the pillars of a new social contract for the digital economy and will be essential for the transformation towards a more open, inclusive and private economy.
We need more than access to our data. We need ownership of it.
Don Tapscott is the author of 16 widely read books on technology in business and society, including the bestseller Blockchain Revolution, which he co-authored with his son Alex. He and Alex are co-hosts. W3B in Toronto, November 8 and 9.
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