Thoughtful Biometrics Self-Sovereign Identity
Author: Peter Kaminski Issue: 2022-11-02
Thoughtful Biometrics; Self-Sovereign Identity
by Peter Kaminski
I had the pleasure this week of chatting with Kaliya IdentityWoman Young. Most of it was catching up after too long, so I am a little sad to report that I do not have an interview with Kaliya to post this week. Maybe another time, after IIW XXXV, perhaps.
I did ask Kaliya for some her most interesting pointers, and she shared the following, for the OGM community and the Plex. Thank you, Kaliya!
Thoughtful Biometrics Workshop – Feb 13-17 '23
[Image not included in the current archive. Images may be included in the future.]
This is a bit of a sneak peek, because registration isn't open yet – although there is an RSVP form to save your place – but it's the start of another thing that Kaliya does so well. Find an important part of the tech world, where society needs to make progress, for the good of all, but where the various parties involved have not been able to communicate effectively, and bring them into communication.
In this case, it's biometrics – using unique physical characteristics to quickly and reliably identify human individuals. You, dear reader, are probably in one of two camps: biometrics give you hives; or biometrics are a key, cornerstone technology for the future.
Kaliya says that the use of biometrics is not going away, and so, how about we get both sides together and figure out how to use the technologies with care and foresight?
Scroll down on the TBW page to see who should be interested and who should attend this workshop. I'm so glad that it's Kaliya who is taking on this challenge, after her careful stewardship in the identity space.
Speaking of which, Kaliya did this great write-up:
Seeing Self-Sovereign Identity in Historical Context, by Kaliya Young, June 21, 2022.
I recommend the whole piece (and it's okay to scroll to the bottom to read the summary first), but here's a teaser:
... to consider deeper questions about why systems of birth certificates and other forms of documentation appeared in Europe centuries earlier. I believe that we have identity documents because we have non-kin-based institutions that require identity documents to function. These two things – documents and institutions (which have governance mechanisms) – together help create complex networked contemporary society and, below, I make this argument in several different ways.Fans of the Big History books – The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity (Graeber & Wengrow, 2021), or The WEIRDest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous (Henrich, 2020) – will likely appreciate Kaliya's take on SSI, and why it might be the ID solution that actually works for people, based on hundreds of years of use of paper credentials by humans interfacing with institutions.
Related:
- Peter Kaminski (author)
- 2022 (year)
- Topics: Events and Gatherings, Tools and Platforms