The number one challenge in computer science
In The Laws of Identity (2005), Kim Cameron lamented for “the Internet’s missing identity layer”, by which he was referring to the identities of Internet users. This pithy notion has carried forward into the self-sovereign identity (SSI) community. The very first chapter of the most comprehensive book on the topic (2021) runs with the theme for example, and mention has also been made on the Internet Archive blog.
Nevertheless, as I’ve written before, nothing can address the ‘missing identity layer’ in the context of human identity any more than the Internet might be said to be missing a ‘truth layer’. Nor do we refer to HTTP as the ‘the conversation layer’ or the FOAF ontology as the ‘the human relations layer’. Such deep and meaningful concepts manifest amongst human beings; they can’t be slotted into the technology stack.
SSI is the latest heir of computer science’s conceptualization of identity, which formed as early computer companies sold their wares to governments and large organizations to manage inventories of users, citizens, employees, and customers. The design goal was to render them legible to the system. Computer science adopted the tenets of legal and bureaucratic identity wholesale, inclined in many ways to consider people as just another machine for simplicity’s sake. This disparity may have been OK(ish) when ‘the digital’ was somewhat detached from ‘the real world’, but we’re at least fifteen years on now from that being the case.
When the SSI community refers to an ‘identity layer’ its subject is actually a set of algorithms and services designed to ensure the frictionless transmission of incorruptible messages between multiple parties; well, between identifiers. This involves some clever mathematics and neat code that will undoubtedly prove of some value in the world with appropriate tight constraints, and it will certainly impact the operation of various conceptualizations of identity, but I think few people would argue that this is human identity per se, or even the digitalization of human identity. Far from it.
But here’s the rub. I argue that it actually sets things up to work against the way human identity operates in the world as conceived by other disciplines with an interest in the matter — e.g. psychology, sociology, anthropology, history, political science, cultural studies. Given that these disciplines frame their concepts in the contexts of human dignity, freedom, and flourishing, this alone should raise deep concerns.
Concluding my work with the AKASHA Foundation, we have co-published an essay with the wonderful Kernel community: Human identity — the number one challenge in computer science. It explains how the frameworks and protocols celebrated by many technologists and some policymakers are in fact insidious, polluting.
A transdisciplinary review and development is urgently needed. We’d love to learn what you make of it.
P.S. Just to say, as a Wiley author, that I’m disgusted that Wiley is one of four publishing houses bringing a lawsuit against the Internet Archive for its digital library lending service. I use the service on occasion and consider it critical to helping maintain the invaluable role of libraries in this digital age. Shame on them.
