OpenID blossoming into something really, really interesting. Yummy.
(Just this summer, when I was talking with identity people about identity in open/principled services, the openID <-> social network thing was purely hypothetical. DiSo is only barely past hypothetical, but… still, very interesting.)
A former co-worker of mine writes about the Live Journal sale; in particular, she has raised concerns in the past about content censorship on LJ and the impact that has on LJ users as citizens. Worth noting (from the comments) that LJ is free software, but that that only partially protects anyone- my friend’s network of friends and content is still tied up in LJ.com.
Heated Debate, by MrIcon, used under the CC BY-SA license (found by a flickr search for “russia you”)
This is just another example of a recurrent theme from our future: what happens when essentially amoral corporations own, and can sell, what amounts to significant part of our identities? Say what you will about Microsoft, but they can’t sell Office to someone and then retroactively turn over all your documents to the new KGB. (Or at least, we don’t think they can ;)
In the very long term, the answer may well be transparent protocols and self-hosted services (like we can choose for email already), but in the medium-term, we’re going to have to figure out something which doesn’t require people to host their own services, but still protects their data and their identities.
From the Washington Post:
In fact, technology shouldn’t be such a laughing matter. As a nation, we wouldn’t tolerate such ignorance about any other area of policymaking. Would we be amused if it came out that Joe Biden, as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, wasn’t clear about the difference between Shiites and Sunnis or couldn’t find Sudan on a map? How about if Chris Dodd, the chairman of the Senate banking committee, wasn’t entirely sure what the term “subprime mortgage” meant? You can be sure that if Susan Collins, the ranking Republican on the Senate homeland security committee, fumbled over what a “dirty bomb” is, pundits and pols on both sides of the aisle would have her head. So why is it so funny that the octogenarian Stevens, the top Republican senator on the committee that regulates the Web, doesn’t know the difference between the Internet and an e-mail? (Some of this stuff is technical, but really now.)
We may not expect that all of our politicians understand technology, but we should at least expect them to be embarassed by not understanding. (HT: TLF.)