This document discusses the emergence of decentralized identities and autonomous devices in an increasingly digital world. Some key points: 1. As more devices become sensors, controllers and autonomous bots, who or what will authenticate, verify, govern and control them? Some devices may take on delegated agency and authority. 2. Digital assets like currencies and personal data are sources of sovereignty and power. Questions arise around who controls these assets and whom can be trusted with this control. 3. New forms of decentralized identity and governance may be needed to authenticate devices, people and digital organizations in safe, transparent and accountable ways without centralized authorities. Technologies like blockchain, smart contracts and open source collaboration could help build trust and privacy into identity systems

1. Internet of Living Things:
Decentralized Identities
and Delegated Agency & Authorities:
June 3, 2015
Dr. John Henry Clippinger
ID3/MIT
© John Clippinger

2. Surreal New Data Ecologies

3. New Immersive Data Ecology
Data are not about but for:
• seeing - recognizing - doing
• influencing - learning - improving
• controlling - feedback -correction
1. We are inside looking out - not
outside looking in
2. Data are like water - essential
nutrient of Digital Ecosystem
Observers and actors are now
digital devices

4. Devices like People
Need to be:
• authenticated
• verified,
• permitted
• governed
Some devices will become
autonomous bots - that learn,
explore, access, control, create
1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uj0v1BgzUdc

5. internet device immersion
1. sensors – smart dust
2. controllers
3. new infrastructure
4. new data commons
5. autonomous bots &
cars

6. BIG DATA & THE NEW POWER
DYNAMICS: FEED THE MACHINE
1. ACCURATE PERSONAL PREDICTION
Identify on actual identities (biological) and
attributes - income, gender, preferences. Knows
you better than you know yourself
2. MACHINE LEARNING- gets better and better -
smarter & smarter - “lives off of and grows in
predictive powers with data

7. Digital Assets Are Source of
Sovereignty & Power
Who Controls My Assets?
• Vaults are digital
• Transfer is digital
• Control over military Assets
Whom can I Trust ?

8. Drones With License ID Beacons
How do you
Control
autonomous
Devices
That Express
Your agency
And their
Own?

9. Digital Assets & Currencies
New Immersive Data Asset Ecologies for:
1. Capturing,
2. Discovering
3. Certifying
4. Securing
5. Securitizing
6. Syndicating
Autonomous exchange of digital assets

10. NEW CLASS OF ASSET:
“NOUMENAL” – QUANTUM ?
1. BITCOIN IS A DEMAND BACKED ASSET
THAT CAN BE TRADED AS ANY OTHER
PHYSICAL ASSET
2. Non material asset whose value is determined
by the extent it is in demand
3. Other assets – could be valued in terms of their
level of use or entropy - Dispersion
LEDGER X – REGULATED BY THE
U.S.COMMODITIES TRADING
COMMISSION

11. the next generation of “phones”
Sentient Devices - “spy phone” vs. “my phone”
55
It sees you and your “friends”,
listens to you, monitors your health,
Reads Your Emotions
movements, interactions, activities,
and tirelessly
learns to know you better -
for yourself and others:
Google Now
Google Glasses
Amazon Phone
PrimeSense
Qualcomm Chips
Emotient
Affectiva

12. Internet of Watching Things
Gateways in the
home?
Who is Watching
Whom?
Who controls the
Data?
Who Monetizes the
Data?
What are the Terms
of Service
Agreements?
12

13. Warnings About Augmentation
50 Years Ago:
1. “The more the data
banks record about
each one of us, the less
we exist.”
2. “We shape our tools
and afterwards our
tools shape us.”
3. “Augmentation
leads to
amputation”
Marshall McLuhan

14. What might happen
when you “loose
your brain” to
Google’s Brain &
Google Now -
“augmentation =
amputation”
mbies ?
?
???

15. Many Expressions of Selves
1. Totemic
2. Emanations -
Spirits
3. Gods
4. Avatars
5. Personas -
Credentials

16. Traditional Solutions to Identity & Authority
: Hierarchical & Static
Hindu Caste System
Medieval Chain of Being
Patriarchal Lineages

17. Traditional Artifacts of
Identities & Access

18. GLOBAL REGULATION ATTEMPTING TO
ADAPT
• user control over
personal data
• consumer data bill of
rights
• mobility of data
• privacy by design
• transparency and
accountability
• self-determination

19. Who Are the New Authorities?
Who now tells you who
you are?
1. Facebook
2. Google
3. Governments
4. Banks

20. Data Regulations Based Upon
Obsolete Mindsets & Practices
1.Do not collect = do not see
2.Opt out = digital pariah
3.Notification and consent = denial
of service attack
4.Do not track = do not know-learn
5.Do not share = digital ghetto
6.Harms and Duties come with the
use of the specific use of the data
and chain of custody

21. Locus of Control of Identity
A. Individual –Atomic
Libertarian “Free” Fixed -
Person Identity –
transactional –
B. Group - Collective Fixed -
Imposed – Clan – State -
Religion -Corporate
C. Conjoint Identities
Mutually Constructed &
Evolving - Relational
A BC

22. The Atomic Self-Made Man
1. Nature – Social Darwinism
2. Private – Property rights
3. Competition - Transaction
4. Freedom & Free Markets
5. Winner Takes All
6. Individual Agency
7. Personal Code of Honor
8. Closed Loop of Self

23. Collective – Social Person
1. Nurture – Social Design –
Collective Identity &
Purpose
2. Group Over Individual
3. Top Down “Rational”
Planning - Rule
4. Variation = Discord
5. Compliance – Conformity
6. Closed Loop of Group

24. Mutually Defining Joint Identities
1. Nurture & Nature
2. Artisan – Relational- Sharing -
Economy
3. Participation – Sharing
4. Embedded – Not Separate
5. Decentralized – Emergent -
self-ordering – Peer to Peer
Economy
6. Open loop
7. Open Source

25. Identities & Norms for Devices
Security
Safety
Resilience
Recoverability
Interoperability
Governance
Trust
Transparency
Accountability

26. Digital Common Law
“and the rule adapts itself to the new
reasons which have been found for it,
and enters into a new career. The old
form receives a new content, and in time
even this form modifies itself to fit the
meaning which it has received
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., The Common Law - Early Forms of
Liability

27. Who or What Has the Authority to
Govern Identities ?
Does it have to be a
who?

28. Unresolved Governance Dilemmas
Who Guards the Guards ?
1. Can there be a method of
oversight that itself is not
subject to collusion and
corruption?
2. Can there be incorruptible
self -correcting and self-
attesting oversight?

29. Decentralized Autonomous Authorities (DAA)
1. Etherium
2. Factom
3. Eris
4. Counterparty
5. Smart Contracts

30. Windhover Principles
1. Self-Sovereign Identity and Control of Personal Data
Individuals and groups should have control of their digital personal identities and personal data
2. Transparent Enforcement and Effective Lite Governance
Enhancing / improving personal privacy while allowing for effective governance and accommodation of legitimate
auditing and enforcement needs
3. Insuring Trust and Privacy
An effective identity system continuously furthers trust, security, accountability and privacy
4. Open Source Collaboration
An inclusive open source methodology to build systems that embody these Principles
30

31. Decentralized Identities
on The Blockchain
1. New ID Cards with
multiple ways of asserting
and approving identities
and credentials
2. Who asserts and who
absorbs or underwrites
the risk
FROM HIERARCHY AND
STATIC TO DECENTRALIZED
AND DYNAMIC
PASSCARD
SHOCARD
MYCARD

32. Rule of law & Self-Executing
Contracts
Can there be rule of law
when Justice is blind and is
trustless and autonomous ?
Is Justice – Trustless?

33. Autonomous Governance Technologies ?
• Governance without governments
• Authorization without authorities
• Regulation without regulators
• Adjudication and sanctions without
lawyers and judges
• Polis without politicians
• Auditing without auditors

34. Legal Agency & Self Hood for Devices
and Digital Organizations
1. How much of our agency should we delegate to
autonomous devices – authorities?
2. How do we revoke the powers and agency of a
device?
3. When will it be beyond us to know?
4. Must There Be a “kill switch” ?
5. Who – What - Can Pull the Switch - When? “Just what
do you think you're doing, Dave? Dave, .”.

35. Questions
clipman@mit.edu
www.idcubed.org