|
I needed a bit longer to think about a reply to Mitch´s reaction
on my note about ownership, because I intended it to be more a practical
contribution to defining the context in which my “digital autonomy”
may be raised through VRM tools and services. I did not intend to shake the
fundaments of capitalism. Although, Habermas (who was born in my neighbourhood
over here in Duesseldorf), having joined Marx´ materialism with the American
way of pragmatism might even be worth looking into, but still is far away from
what we discuss here. What I´m trying to find out is what kind of existing or evolving
standard or something which still has to be defined, can give me some control
on the flow of information to, from and about me. In a digital world, ownership
is not a concept which helps me answering this question. If I for example had a
CRM and created some record called Mitch Ratcliffe with some information I collect
through Internet, enrich them with assumptions on his personal preferences, and
sell that record to some Apple stores – it is not relevant for me wether I
own this information or not, because I sell it anyway and it´s not illegal and
it´s done every day. And for you, Mitch, it´s not relevant as well, because you
don´t even know about it. But the results of such information brokerage will most probably
not meet your needs as good as if you were the one who expressed them yourself and
made them available together with some rights definition on how that
information flow from you to that future marketplace is mediated. There has been discussion on similar concepts before. I remember
a project about agent mediated commerce I was dealing with nearly a decade ago
and it was all about finding a way to match Demand and Supply through some marketplace
which is owned by nobody. It was too early then. From: Mark Lizar [mailto:
] The conversation is about control. Ownership to gain
control of what is inalienably mine already is a less advantageous
position. The activity of managing my own personal information is =>
ownership. I think there is a confusion tying ownership to control in
that ownership should instead be looked at like an action, ownership being
actualised in the activity of managing. What is needed here is a taxonomy not a
right. I propose No requirement of ownership. If we need to be something, why not
a master data controller? Adding only the one word 'master' to the current
written interpretation of data protection law illustrates a taxonomy in the
responsibilities on data controllers. Something we all are,
already. Identifying oneself as a master data controller of that
information gives the individual the power to slave data. Identity
Ownership breeds the potential of an identity slavery which can be socially
engineered over people. I suggest that we instead impose a slavery over the
data we control and create. Let
the learning curve of the individual be the activity of the
user-centric. Sidestepping the ownership conversation with a position of
being a master controller is the catalyst. The discussion of
ownership vs lack of ownership in effect defeats the purpose of fighting for
ownership as the fight focuses on a illusion that we cant manage our own
identity without external rights. When in fact we can sidestep this whole
issue by managing our own identity and there are many new technologies on the
way to help us do that. Marx didnt conceptualize information
technology and the power to exploit and protect ourselves. This article by Druey is very pragmatic when approaching why
ownership wont work. http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/home/uploads/339/Druey.pdf Thanks Joerg! There are many other written
works that discuss this much more verbosely.
I think that is a tremendously misleading reaction to the
problems of mass media capitalism, which prevents what you rightly describe as
"a balanced position between parties" in marketplaces. I
think that talking about ownership over identity is just what is
misleading. Ownership is misleading, and an unnecessary step. The
cou de gras is that we all have control without an external requirement of
ownership. The VRM conversation is a commercial soft spot to help
re-interpret the existing infrastructure in very viable ways. A middle
ground for a balanced use of these management tools. As
for,
I
will always defer to the 1948 Universal
Declarations of Human Rights, We all are the higher authority,
(the dog is god allegory). VRM understands that for people to take some
burden and for companies to take a different burden that facilitates better
type of business relationship. Businesses need to advertise different
things than they are now, and people need better tools to advertise
differently. The work and control in the relationship being
re-distributed. This is something that is organically evolving via a learning
curve, which I am sure we all have numbers on. (dog food appreciated:I
would like to compare numbers, msg:me) Overall,
I disagree with the mechanics of your post but agree with your conclusion. The
majority of everything that has value in relationships comes out of activities
where people are not customers. My 3 year old son is yet to know he is a
customer. I agree, and I think most others will also agree that:
- m "Sell not virtue to purchase wealth, nor Liberty to
purchase power." - Ben Franklin On 13 Oct 2007, at 02:29, Mitch Ratcliffe wrote:
Joerg, Thanks for this. I don't agree with the idea that
information cannot be owned. I think that is a tremendously misleading reaction
to the problems of mass media capitalism, which prevents what you rightly
describe as "a balanced position between parties" in marketplaces. Specifically, I think that we have to assert our individual
rights to property in personal information so that we, as the locus of
information, are able to exercise the appropriate control of that information.
It is analogous to the relationship between "natural resources" and
who benefits from them. If information about us cannot be owned by us, we are
not going to benefit from its exploitation, nor do we have the control to
prevent its exploitation. The result is that our resources become someone
else's property by dint of their investment in organizing it. So, the guy with
the biggest shovel wins, a tragic repeat of the last 400 years of history, if
not all history. I also prefer capitalism as an impetus for participation in
the economy. Witold Gombrowicz, in his Guide to Philosophy in Six Hours and
Fifteen Minutes, points a critical element of the choice of language to center
our understanding of value when he criticizes the basis of Marxism: "For me, the Marxist question was absolutely badly put
because they asked from the moral point of view of 'justice." Bur the real
problem is not moral, it is economic. To increase wealth is the priority, the
distribution of wealth is a secondary thing.... So, the word 'worker' does not
mean a physician who works hard from morning to night, but rather it means a
street sweeper who works for five minutes and then looks at the wall, etc....
According to Marxism , we are faced with a distorted humanity. It is exploitation
which is the source of power. It is our consciousness which is distorted,
because it adapted to a system of exploitation it does not want to admit to.
Marxism is an attempt at demystification. In a philosophical sense, Marxism
does not posit an exact idea of the world, but only a liberation of
consciousness so that it may react in an authentic and not deformed way to the
world and man." While I agree generally with the aims of the VRM idea, I
believe the language we use is important and the label VRM is incorrect. If we
define this design problem based on the idea that "people are foremost
customers," which follows from a definition of transactions as primarily
commercial with "vendors," we end up perpetuating the commercial
nature of what we are reacting to, which is the overwhelming dominance of
advertising as the financial mechanism that drives networked interaction. And if we say information can't be owned, it delivers value
only to those with the resources to put it to use. It puts all of us in the
position of property whose value can only be organized and exploited by a third
party. Abolishing property, as proven by Leninist Marxism in action, only
establishes a higher authority that benefits at everyone's expense. While his
analysis was spot on, Marx's revolution was built on definitions that
obliterated the individual's power. We must center this on the user as a person, not a customer
before they are a person. Ownership of our identity and all that defines it,
including our relationships—which is one of the key areas I am focusing
on—is critical to providing a basis for negotiating with the world. We
are the home for the rights, because rights are not accorded to government or
any entity without some prior negotiation (read Hume, Locke and Montesqueiu
--or Habermas) in which the individual cedes their power.
If we don't use the concept of ownership to assert our
control of information, we are left unrepresented, like a hillside full of coal
under the blade of the biggest shovel trying to get the stored energy out and
into "productive" use. Its our lack of ability to manage our information, not own
our information which has to do with control .
Let's look at your example of the doctor's diagnosis. Yes,
the diagnosis would not have been recorded without the doctor, but it only
represents the identification of one case of a general condition that would not
exist without me having that condition. Now, did the doctor create the
condition? No, she diagnosed it, and I paid for that diagnosis. If I don't
authorize the sharing of that data, the doctor has no right to use me as an
individual named example of a person with that condition. If I need to verify
my condition to another party, I may have to pay the doctor again to transmit
the information about my condition to, say, an insurer, but that doesn't
constitute a transfer of ownership of the information about me. Now, think about this? What if the doctor diagnoses herself
with a condition? Do they own the diagnosis anymore than another patient? No,
because they still have to have it verified by a third-party if they want
someone to pay for treatment. If she treats herself at her own expense, which
is illegal for regulatory-legal reasons, she has merely retained information about
herself while no other conditions of the transaction have changed compared to
any other patient's asking for and receiving treatment. Just as it is a mistake to lionize the "worker"
versus the bourgeoisie "executive" or "doctor," it is a
mistake to lionize ourselves as customers, because we transact much more often
without trading value. If we don't give individuals control over their
information as individuals, before the occurrence of a transaction, we discard
much value that still needs to be protected. Then, we individuals can choose to
use our power or not, by acting on their own behalf or through an intermediary
or intermediaries. Better than being an unrepresented natural resource, if you
ask me. Finally, the fact is that we do not have walled gardens with
regards personal information today, though that is the primary mode through
which we experience the power of our personal information. Personal information
about us is everywhere, floating free and unrestrained. Indeed, there is more
information about us than we can conceive, as anyone who has had the FBI in the
United States show up at their door because of what they choose to read. We need to be careful that in tearing down these commercial
walls we don't utterly destroy our personal control of individually identifying
information, information about our relationships, interests and content of our
thoughts. And 90 percent (to choose an arbitrary number the represents the
overwhelmingly social nature of our interactions) of that identifying information
exists outside the vendor-customer nexus. As I've read this list for the past however many months it
has been, this has eaten at me and it has presented itself in a series of
tangential debates about the notion of identity and property that prevent a
breakthrough. It's why I haven't posted much. I'm not coming out against the
ideas being discussed, just asking for careful consideration of language.
Gaining clarity on the issues I am raising, I think, will provide greater
clarity in the design issues we face as a group. Best, Mitch P.S. -- Doc, I will respond to your excellent reply
shortly. On Oct 12, 2007, at 1:14 AM, Joerg Resch wrote:
After some time of
reading – my first posting now. I´m not very used to mailinglists, please
excuse if I force any written or unwritten rules. Mitch, I would like to point
to the fact that information
cannot be owned, because it is not kind of an object which may be
attributed to a subject by law (which itself is information as well). There is
a very good publication about the ownership of information from Jean Nicolas
Druey: http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/home/uploads/339/Druey.pdf . So, talking about the
persistence and flow of identity information between parties and through market
places, we should not try to think, that we can own that information. If I
understand the VRM discussion and the concept of user centric identity right,
it is about creating a more balanced position between parties taking part in
whatever market place, where some kind of “rules layer” on top of
the information layer gives me the power to influence it´s flow. I´m not the
owner of my doctor´s diagnosis, even if it concerns me. But I may have some
rights influencing the distribution of this diagnosis, because it affects me.
We need a home for these rights, instead of trying to own information. VRM, how I understand
it, is about creating kind of a rules metasystem above or beyond the walled
gardens we currently have. Joerg Resch Kuppinger Cole From: Mitch Ratcliffe [
">mailto:
] Bank = owner? Banks don't own the
money they hold. Remember that every ledger sheet has to balance--banks make a
profit on their management of money, including their own balancing of assets
and liabilities as well as from fees paid for transaction (management of money)
services. Banks don't own money, which is
technically the property of the central banks that issue currencies. We may own our data, but it seems
the problem is working not with one intermediary, as in the
resource-constrained geographically disparate cash or electronic money economy,
but many intermediaries in a variety of domains. Even banks have clearinghouse
services. Perhaps the better taxonomy is: Money = Data Central Banks create and own bank notes = people create and
own data about themselves (and have the same level of connectivity, albeit not
throughput). Banks = "value-added" domain-specific
intermediaries Currency = no user-centric analog, which is why banking
analogies fall down and why VRM pushes social exchanges to the fringe. We don't need a currency to complete this picture. We need
to forget it. Data flows from place to place, but must be recallable by
the owner as the volume of bank notes in circulation may be expanded or
contracted by a central bank. That leaves the bank dependent on the central
bank, just as an intermediary should be dependent on rather than in control of
its customers, the owners of data. Transactions in social environments are not solely about
the exchange of monetary or commercial value, as it may also be gifted value,
prospective sharing of data to discover potential value (which may be the basis
of a future negotiation that, if it fails, results in revocation of access to
data), or may have no value ("sharing" or "altruism"). Trust
cannot stand in for a currency, because it serves a different function and is
variable from moment to moment and relationship to relationship across various
topics. I spent several years working with the Chaordic Commons,
which was attempting to extend the shared ownership-distributed governance
system that produced VISA. The type of "bank of the future" mentioned
below is tremendously complex and not amenable to comparisons to cooperative
banks, because there are many informal settings for the exchange of information
prior to, during and after, even in lieu of, a commercial transaction that was
simply ignored by banks. Indeed, many of the functions of those banks
formalized processes that are trivial today. Being an objective third-party recorder
of transactions and notary services were the primary value-add provided
by these cooperative banks, and at a far higher cost to users than data
networks require today. So to draw out the metaphor based on this taxonomy, if
the money is like data, the basis of exchange can be negotiated anywhere, but
the access to the actual specie needs to reside on each of our "central
banks" on or controlled by our PC, phone, etc. so that the owner of that
data/specie can regulate the value of that asset, and in both strictly monetary
and social senses. The problem that I've finally identified in my reading of
this discussion over the past months is that all the scenarios proposed
describe commercial transactions of one sort or another as the default design
challenge, to the detriment of the much wider range of social interactions in
which we use and share information. We don't change currencies from dollars/euros/yen/RMB to
split a bill and pay for drinks among friends while using some other currency
to pay for business services or capital goods, unless geopolitical borders are
crossed. Money is money, give or take the current exchange rate between
currencies. We don't call the minister to talk about giving alms in the
form of livestock while insisting he pay us for what we sell him in cash. Even in medical records we see the need for different forms
of access to, and management of, personal medical information that do not
relate to commercial transactions or value exchange. We don't create medical
information, we are medical information, most of it necessarily recorded by
experts who interpret many factors to provide a diagnosis, treatment or as a
part of wider study. We pay a doctor to see and diagnose our condition; she
writes that information down not only because of the fee we paid for the visit,
but for her own future use, because of regulatory requirements, the
requirements of insurers and transaction processors, legal liability management
and, if they participate in clinical research, for use in research. We may want
to share that some or all of our medical information to find others with
similar conditions or to contribute to research for a cure without ever
contemplating an exchange of value. The problem, then, is how to interact with the different
intermediaries who might interact with our information in response to economic,
social or survival needs. I'd wager that the majority of those interactions
during your typical day, while they may be a source of value to someone, are
not primarily commercial from your perspective. So, before we get to the bank,
we have to start with the social interactions that precede or moot the need for
fixed exchanges of value. Before we are a customer we are someone or many
persona who isn't a customer, yet in discussing this question we begin with the
role of customer. That isn't user-centric. Mitch Ratcliffe Tetriad LLC On Oct 11, 2007, at 5:48 PM, Mark
Lizar wrote:
The idea of a community driven and
trusted intermediary is a very attractive model for a bank of the
future. Theories that trust can be used as a currency replacing
money provide a good concept of how an identity bank may prove valuable.
Although I think for VRM and the user centric perspective as a whole, there is
the core concept that the individual should be the identity bank. What
is underlying such an effort is 'clarity' over control of identity. On 10 Oct 2007, at 14:13, Bart
Stevens wrote:
All, Why don't you start with setting
up some sort of bank? (The Swiss are good at this in the old world with the
numbered accounts). And you structure it into some
sort of corporative framework. (In some European countries farmers started
banks in the old days, like Rabobank in Holland and KBC in Belgium) This way you "give" the
ownership/shareholder-ship to the community members, and by doing so you can
create some sort of trust. Instead of leaving this to the Microsoft's or
Google's of this world. Hope it's clear, if not let me
know. Bart On Oct 10, 2007, at 2:47 PM,
Michael Becker wrote:
From a marketers prospective, one
of the leading Relationship Marketing theorists, Gummensson (see ref. below),
tells us that there are 30 different relationships that the marketer must
contend with, including government. So,
you're absolutely right. There
are a tremendous number of governmental rules and regulations, industry best
practices and self-governance code of conduct and similar guidelines, specific
corporate compliance rules (e.g. rule one must follow to deliver traffic on a
mobile carrier network) not to mention common sense that the
marketer/brand/company must adhere to in order to compete and thrive in our
ever increasingly complex world. One thing that comes to mind while
reading these threads is that there may be a situation where the VRM system
actually knows more about the consumer than the consumer themselves. In fact, the consumer may not
like what they see, in which case we're going to be grappling with consumer
psychological avoidance and acceptance models when considering the diffusion
and adoption of VRM business models. For
instance, using the health care example, some people may simply not want to to
know that they have Cancer. Also,
for some other diseases that carry with them a social stigma the consumer may
know the results of the test but simple does not want this data memorialized in
their PKB. Moreover, with
the later situation, who will own the liability if this data "accidentally"
gets out to the real world? The PKB developer, the hosting agent, the bank,
hospital, brand, the consumer (what if the breach was no fault of the
consumer)? Who will be
responsible when the consumer has their health insurance raised, or loses coverage,
has their reputation within their social circle damaged when the data some how
goes public and hits the press, etc. These
are some very real and quite challenging situations to grapple with. Michael Ref: Gummesson, E. (2002). /Total
Relationship Marketing/ (Second). London: Butterworth Heinemann. Rick Schaefer wrote:
Bart Stevens TenForce Pragmatic Project Management T +32 16 31 48 60 F +32 16 65 90 85 M + 32 473 985 450 Skype: berendbotje2
|
Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.19.