The dystopia of self-sovereign identity (SSI)
AI summary of the linked articleSelf-sovereign identity (SSI) has distressing emergent outcomes that contradict the hopes of its community, and its designers need to reflect and rethink. The author says SSI is sociotechnology, yet the SSI community has not invited psychologists, sociologists or other social scientists into its work, and its "identity layer" is a set of algorithms and services, not human identity itself. The book's claim that decentralized identity resembles carrying credentials in a wallet is called dangerously misleading, by analogy with social media's unintended consequences. The piece also warns that pressure to display verifiable claims could push people toward harmful choices, such as getting infected with covid-19 to obtain a claim needed for work. |
1 comment mishaSubmitter “... we cannot accept technology as a substitute for taking social, cultural, and political considerations seriously. Decentralized technology does not guarantee decentralized outcomes.“ … “Verbs describe actions, states, change — in fact then the very nature of living things and living systems. Your “I”, and your “you” from others’ points of view, are always changing, often gradually, occasionally radically. It’s how we keep re-orienting our understanding of others and re-orienting ourselves in social contexts. On the other hand, birth certificates, social security numbers, driving licenses, and passports are noun-like — they're not intended to be dynamic, by design. They are artificial, as Phil Windley notes so well: Descartes didn't say "I have a birth certificate, therefore, I am." The game of law — a relatively recent bureaucratization — requires noun-like identities. The game of life involves verb-like identities. The art here then is ensuring that the essential human qualities encompassed by verb-like identities are accommodated by systems of ‘digital identity’, or not obliterated by them at the very least.” |
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