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BUILDING IDENTITY AND TRUST INTO THE NEXTGENERATION INTERNET

A REPORT FOR THE LINK TANK

Ken Jordan • Jan Hauser • Steven Foster

Presented at the Planetwork conference: "Networking A Sustainable Future" in San Francisco on June 6, 2003

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License

Abstract

Could the next generation of online communications strengthen civil society by better connecting people to others with whom they share affinities, so they can more effectively exchange information and self-organize? Could such a system help to revitalize democracy in the 21st century? When networked personal computing was first developed, engineers concentrated on extending creativity among individuals and enhancing collaboration between a few. They did not much consider what social interaction among millions of Internet users would actually entail. It was thought that the Net's technical architecture need not address the issues of "personal identity" and "trust," since those matters tended to take care of themselves.

This paper proposes the creation of an Augmented Social Network (ASN) that would build identity and trust into the architecture of the Internet, in the public interest, in order to facilitate introductions between people who share affinities or complementary capabilities across social networks. The ASN has three main objectives: 1) To create an Internet-wide system that enables more efficient and effective knowledge sharing between people across institutional, geographic, and social boundaries. 2) To establish a form of persistent online identity that supports the public commons and the values of civil society. 3) To enhance the ability of citizens to form relationships and self-organize around shared interests in communities of practice in order to better engage in the process of democratic governance. In effect, the ASN proposes a form of "online citizenship" for the Information Age.

The ASN is not a piece of software or a website. Rather, it is a model for a next- generation online community that could be implemented in a number of ways, using technology that largely exists today. It is a system that would enhance the power of social networks by using interactive digital media to exploit the transitive nature of trust through the principle of six degrees of connection. As a result, people will be able to inform themselves and self-organize more effectively -- in non-hierarchical, rhizomatic social formations -- leading to more opportunities for engaged citizenship. Part 1 of the paper discusses the concepts behind the ASN, why it is important to pursue such a project today, and the dangers civil society faces if it is not pursued. Part 2 describes a technical architecture for the protocols and software that would support a system of recommendations through trusted third parties across the Internet as a whole. Part 3 offers recommendations for first steps toward achieving the ASN.

The ASN weaves together four distinct technical areas into components of an interdependent system. The four main elements of the ASN are: persistent online identity; interoperability between communities; brokered relationships; and public interest matching technologies. Each of these is discussed in a separate section in detail.

The issue of persistent online identity is examined first through a contrast between the needs of civil society and current initiatives in the commercial sector, the Liberty Alliance Project and Microsoft's .Net identity system, named Passport. The ASN calls for a public interest approach to online identity that enables individuals to express their² interests outside contexts determined by commerce. This approach would include a digital profile that has an "affinity reference" that would facilitate connections to trusted third parties.

The section on interoperability between online communities starts with a discussion of Reed's Law, which shows how the value of social networks grows exponentially through interconnectivity. We then discuss how the ASN would apply Reed's Law to online communities of practice in new ways, through the creation of interoperability protocols that will enable individuals to cross more easily between social networks. The ASN would create strategically placed "doors" between online community infrastructures, which today act like "walled castles." Also discussed are the module software applications necessary to extend the functionality of online community infrastructures so they can support ASN activity.

The section on brokered relationships begins by discussing the importance of brokering introductions between people using the ASN, and describes the "introduction protocols" that would facilitate this process. While many ASN introductions would be automated, others of a more sensitive nature will require specialized brokering services that provide customized introductions, appropriate to narrowly defined circumstances. These are discussed, as well as current brokering systems that are developing relevant technology.

The section on public interest matching technologies explains why it is crucial for the civil society sector to participate in the creation of online ontologies and taxonomies that are now shaping the semantic structure of the Internet. Also discussed are the ways that matching technologies enhance online communities, and how the ASN would develop protocols that enable interoperability between online ontological frameworks. The latter would enrich knowledge sharing between social networks by allowing distinct communities to compare "knowledge maps," and easily access diverse viewpoints.

The ASN could be achieved in an incremental manner, with software and protocols developed among a relatively small group of participants, and gradually adopted by larger online community systems as they see fit. The ASN would be built on open standards, shepherded by a not-for-profit initiative that coordinates efforts in the technical areas described above. Aspects of the implementation could be undertaken by for-profit companies that respect these open standards, just as companies today profit from providing email or web pages. But to insure that the ASN meets its public interest objectives, participating organizations would have to agree to abide by the ASN's principles of implementation.

Part 1: The Future of Online Identity and Trust

The ASN has three main objectives:

To create an Internet-wide system that enables more efficient and effective knowledge sharing between people across institutional, geographic, and social boundaries.
To establish a form of persistent online identity that supports the public commons and the values of civil society.
To enhance the ability of citizens to form relationships and self-organize around shared interests in communities of practice in order to better engage in the process of democratic governance.

In this paper we present a model for a next generation online community that can achieve these goals. It is, certainly, an ambitious program. But as we will show, the primary challenges are not technical. Rather, much of the core technology necessary to create the ASN already exists. The question is whether the will and determination can be marshaled to apply tools that currently exist, or that are now emerging, to better serve civil society.

II. ASN Approach - Designing An Internet-Wide System of Trust Current Trends in Online Community

At first, the social network that emerged from the use of these tools was relatively small. Early users of the Internet could, with some assurance, feel they shared affinities with others they met online. The small size of the community, and the intensity of connections between those who participated, created an environment in which you were encouraged to act responsibly in order to protect your personal reputation. As John Perry Barlow, co- founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, put it, "Back then, we knew who everybody was. We knew who to trust."2 But as the online social network grew from a few hundred to the many millions -- becoming, effectively, many different, overlapping social networks -- the ability to identify affinities and establish trust through the Net withered.

ASN's Democratic Vision

Without trusted relationships, civil society comes undone. Francis Fukuyama and others have made a case for the centrality of trust to our economic life, and of course trust is the essential ingredient for democratic governance. But as many commentators have noted, in recent years trust has been in decline in our society. The issue is complex and opinions vary about causes. However, whether it is the barrage of corporate scandals, the low esteem in which most people hold the news media (the source of our public knowledge), or the controversy over vote counting in Florida, symptoms of distrust are rampant.

Commentators dating to Alexis de Tocqueville have credited the importance of community organizations in providing forums where trusted relationships can take shape. Churches, schools, libraries, clubs of all kinds, public meeting spaces -- these local institutions have been the breeding ground for democratic engagement. It is now commonplace to bemoan the widespread erosion of these institutions, which have been hobbled by challenges to traditional spiritual practices, the realities of two-career households, the pressures of an expanding work week, and a steady diet of television. Little attention has been given to the development of new social forms, appropriate to our time, that could reengage citizens with their neighbors and revitalize democracy.

Four Interdependent Elements

The four main elements of the ASN are:

Persistent Identity. Enabling individuals online to maintain a persistent identity as they move between different Internet communities, and to have personal control over that identity. This identity should be multifarious and ambiguous (as identity is in life itself), capable of reflecting an endless variety of interests, needs, desires, and relationships. It should not be reduced to a recitation of our purchase preferences, since who we are can not be reduced to what we buy.
Interoperability Between Online Communities. People should be able to cross easily between online communities under narrowly defined circumstances, just as in life we can move from one social network to another. Protocols and standards need to be developed and adopted to enable this interoperability. This interoperability should include the ability to identify and contact others with shared affinities or complementary capabilities, and to share digital media with them, enabling valuable information to pass from one online community to the next in an efficient manner. To support ASN-type activity, modularized enhancements to the technical infrastructures of separate online communities will need to be developed and adopted.
Brokered Relationships. Using databased information, online brokers (both automated and "live") should be able to facilitate the introduction between people who share affinities and/or complementary capabilities and are seeking to make connections. In this manner, the proverbial "six degrees of separation" can be collapsed to one, two or three degrees -- in a way that is both effective and that respects privacy. Such a system of brokered relationships should also enable people to find information or media that is of interest to them, through the recommendations of trusted third parties.
Public Interest Matching Technologies. The Semantic Web is perhaps the best known effort to create a global "dictionary" of shared terms to facilitate finding information online that is of interest to you. Within the ASN, a public interest initiative around matching technologies, including ontologies and taxonomies, will enable you to find other people with whom you share affinities -- no matter which online communities they belong to. These matching technologies need to be broad and robust enough to include the full range of political discussion about issues of public interest. They should not be confined to commercial or narrowly academic topics; NGOs and other public interest entities need to be represented in the process that determines these matching technologies.

III. The ASN User Experience

Suppose the ASN was in place today. How would it enhance your online experience? Without delving into technical details, and risking oversimplification, here are some examples of how it would work:

Scenario 1. "Finding Others Who Share Affinities or Complementary Capabilities"
Scenario 2. "Links Between Communities with Common Interests"
Scenario 3. "Media Forwarded From Trusted Sources"
Scenario 4. "Automated Personal Introductions Across Communities"
Scenario 5. "Brokered Personal Introductions Across Communities"

Conclusion: As these scenarios demonstrate, the ASN enhances the way that social networks operate off-line, by making possible more efficient forms of behavior through the use of digital technology. Of course, crucial issues will need to be resolved in order for this system to be effective. We are sober and realistic about these challenges. But, as we will show below, many of the technical issues are being addressed right now. However, most of these are being worked on in the commercial sector, and will lead to implementations that are not necessarily in the public interest. Which is to say: just because the ASN can be achieved does not mean that it will be.

Tools To Enhance Citizenship

Greater Participation in Governance.
Self-Organizing Around Issues.
Alternative Economies.
Decentralizing Decision-Making.

ASN and The Digital Divide

The Digital Divide is a serious challenge that must be addressed. It is crucial to the future of a just, egalitarian society that the Internet not only be the domain of elites. Some might say that until this imbalance in Internet access is rectified, a project like the ASN should not be a priority. However, were the ASN to be implemented, the argument to address the Digital Divide becomes even more compelling -- because it would be an open acknowledgement of the importance of the Internet to a functioning democracy. The nation would be well served by having access to the Internet considered to be a requirement for every citizen, in order for each person to be well-informed and engaged in their governance.

Attention given to the ASN should not be seen as competitive with Digital Divide efforts. Rather, the two are highly complementary, and should be pursued in parallel.

Part 2: The ASN Technical Components

I. The ASN Architecture

The technical strategy: To enhance the power of social networks by using interactive digital media to exploit the transitive nature of trust through the principle of six degrees of connection. Much has been written about the role played by social networks in civil society, by theorists as diverse as Albert-Laszlo Barabasi, Duncan Watts, Mark Granovetter, Malcom Gladwell, and Manuel Castells. The Augmented Social Network (ASN) seeks to bring a greater level of efficiency and effectiveness to purposeful and goal-oriented social networks by improving the ability of digital communications to support the social networking process. By doing so, the ASN will provide needed tools to enhance non-hierarchical, rhizomatic forms of social organization in the digital era.

The essential technical elements of the ASN are as follows:

Persistent Identity. As federated network identity becomes ubiquitous on the Internet, spearheaded by industry initiatives such as the Liberty Alliance and Passport, civil society organizations will need to articulate a public interest approach to persistent online identity that supports the public commons. As one aspect of a public interest vision of persistent identity, we propose (a) a civil society digital profile that represents an individual's interests and concerns that relate to his or her role as a citizen engaged in forms of democratic governance. One aspect of this civil society approach would be to provide a working model for persistent identity that gives individuals a high level of control over how their profile is used. In particular, the digital profile should include the ability for each individual to (b) express affinities and capabilities, and to list or assist in the discovery of other trusted individuals who share these interests. The purpose of this functionality is to enable automated agents or third party brokers to access this data in a digital profile, through a series of (c) introduction protocols, in order to provide connections between individuals who share affinities or have complementary capabilities. In this way, the ASN is able to introduce those who have shared affinities or complementary capabilities, including those who are members of wholly distinct online communities, based on the recommendations of trusted third parties. These recommendations might either be fully automated, in the case of less valuable or less sensitive relationships, or take place through a brokering service, when privacy, trust, and stakeholdership is of the highest concern. 24
Enhancements to Online Community Infrastructure. Some "walled garden" online communities have begun to implement ASN-type functionality within the confines of a single community infrastructure. With the implementation of the ASN, automated ASN interactions will take place across existing online community environments. In order to support this activity, modularized enhancements to the technical infrastructures of separate online communities will need to be developed and adopted. These enhancements are essentially of two types. The first is the writing and adoption of (a) interoperability protocols that will enable communication between the membership management databases of distinct online community infrastructures, so that ASN-related data can flow between separate online communities. The second is the development of modularized applications that enable (b) the pre-processing and post-processing of email communications on online community infrastructures, as well as the ability to compose, address, and tag ASN messages appropriately. These applications would facilitate three types of activity. First, they would enable ASN users to (c) receive specially tagged automated introductions to other with whom they share affinities or have complementary capabilities. These automated introductions may include the name of the person who provided the third party recommendation. Secondly, they would enable (d) automated forwarding of relevant media, based on the expressed affinities of the individual stored as part of his digital profile. Third, they would enable (e) the generation of ad hoc social networks based on expressed affinities and the recommendations or introductions through trusted third parties. These ad hoc social networks would be initiated by an individual sending a request for participation in a narrowly defined project; the message would then be forwarded automatically based on data in digital profiles; the resulting ad hoc community (or swarm) would dissolve with the completion of the stated objective. Online community infrastructures would authenticate the identity of ASN users, and (f) implement reputation mechanisms to enforce accountability for past actions. Reputation mechanisms would reside within the community infrastructure, determined by the context, concerns, and rules appropriate to the needs of each particular community.
Matching Technologies. For the ASN to be effective, the civil society issues addressed within the system have to be easily identified by searches, with matches made even when exact use of language does not correspond. To facilitate high quality searching which supports online discourse and networking in the public interest, there is a need for an initiative to develop (a) matching technologies for topics relevant to civil society, including public interest ontologies and taxonomies. Focused efforts must be established to insure that ontologies and taxonomies developed with standards such as XML, RDF and topic maps include consideration of those issues relevant to civil society. In addition, the ASN would develop (b) protocols for the interoperability of online ontological frameworks, so that the same set of data could be encountered through multiple perspectives, enabling comparisons of diverse viewpoints, which in itself would lead to new connections between disparate social networks.
Brokering Services. In instances when personal relationships are highly prized and carefully guarded, though still available through the ASN, an automated introduction system would not be advisable. In these cases, ASN users would engage a third party brokering service to carefully analyze potential affinity or complementary capability matches, and to provide (a) a brokered introduction. These interactions would not necessarily take place only within existing online community infrastructures, but also through the auspices of a brokering service that exists as a separate entity, designed to facilitate these more sensitive introductions. In these special cases, (b) context specific introduction protocols would be developed, allowing each social network to establish the terms through which introductions are made at a highly granular level, perhaps including intermediaries in the process in order to facilitate the initial person-to-person interactions.
Conclusion: These interdependent technical initiatives form a comprehensive vision for a next generation online community that will enhance the capability of social networks to create knowledge, spur innovation, and engage citizens in the governance of their democracy. Let us now examine each of these initiatives in detail, and see how they relate to the greater whole.

II. Persistent Identity

Overview: A New Era of Identity

It should go without saying that any form of online identity must be designed to prevent, as best as possible, abuses of trust and unwanted violations of privacy rights from occurring. But a progressive vision for online identity should be more than a defensive posture meant to protect individuals from unwelcome incursions on their personal data. Might this same technology be used to strengthen democracy and support a more engaged citizenship? Shouldn't we ask: in an ideal world, what kind of online identity would we want?

It is worth noting that as computing becomes ubiquitous, and surveillance cameras and global positioning devices grow commonplace, the distinction between actions "online" and "off-line" will grow increasingly fuzzy. The tracing and analyzing of an individual's actions will become just as possible in the physical world as on the Internet. The difference between the two, in this regard, will soon be meaningless. Think of the famous scene in Steven Spielberg's movie "Minority Report," when Tom Cruise goes to a clothing store: cameras follow him from the minute he walks in the door; he is identified as a customer in the store's database, and his purchase history is accessed so that the store's automated system can make customized recommendations. Such a digital profile will not only include clothes bought at the brick-and-mortar store itself, but also items ordered online, or at other stores anywhere in the world. This integration of data collected over the Internet with data captured in the real world is already underway. So by addressing the issue of online identity today, we set the stage for a broader discussion about all forms of personal identity, vis a vis society, in the near future.

From Shopping To Self

Given the commanding role that the market now plays in our society, it should not be surprising that commerce has been the engine driving the development of systems and standards to support online identity for the "next generation Internet." While there are a number of public interest initiatives in this area, they are hampered by a lack of resources, and an inability to forcefully represent the needs of civil society within the bodies that are setting standards for industry. For example, the Internet Engineering Task Force has been developing a system for online contracts that connects identity to reputation in an innovative fashion. Also, projects like XNS.org, One Name, and the Identity Commons are contributing significant intellectual work in this area. However, without industry clout, or a mandate from the public interest sector, their efforts are unable to acquire the momentum necessary to effect industry-only efforts. In the software field, establishing a high adoption rate is critical to a technology's success; it is critical to reach the tipping point where the new piece of software becomes ubiquitous. In part because these worthy efforts are short on resources, and in part because they have not been able to attract significant attention from their natural constituencies (the public interest sphere), they have yet to exert much influence on the shaping of online identity systems. As a result, the problems that online identity is now being designed to solve are the problems of business. The enhancements that online identity might bring to the public commons are not even discussed in forums where decisions are made.

Current Efforts in Identity

While there are several independent initiatives focusing on persistent identity, the field is being paced by two large scale efforts that, because of their access to resources and their position in the market, dominate discussion of the issue -- and will likely determine the system everyone else will ultimately use to implement federated network identity. These are the Liberty Alliance, which was mentioned above, Microsoft's .Net identity system, named Passport.5 Passport was the first out of the box. It was launched in 1999, and had the benefit of the vast database of registered members that Microsoft had accumulated for its various services. Most notably, the HotMail web mail site had many millions of subscribers. Each of those accounts became Passport members, assuming that they chose to take advantage of the system. Today, Passport claims over 200 million members, though it is not clear how many of those people deliberately signed on to be Passport users. In fact, Microsoft has faced significant resistance to Passport from other companies, who cast a suspicious eye on every new project that storms out of Redmond. In the field, there is great concern that online identity -- including each user's personal profile -- might become property of a single corporation. Such centralized control would be a devastating blow to the kind of "circle of trust" that advocates feel is essential to the success of an identity system. Not to mention the red flags it would raise for civil libertarians.

Building Your Online Identity

Underlying this report is the assumption that every individual ought to have the right to control his or her own online identity. You should be able to decide what information about yourself is collected as part of your digital profile, and of that information, who has access to different aspects of it. Certainly, you should be able to read the complete contents of your own digital profile at any time. An online identity should be maintained as a capability that gives the user many forms of control. Without flexible access and control, trust in the system of federated network identity will be minimal.

Both Liberty Alliance and Passport claim that every user will have some measure of control over their digital profile. However, until the final specifications for these systems are published and analyzed, the true degree of user control will remain unknown.. Regardless of their claims, civil libertarians have reason to be suspicious of both Liberty and Passport, because the entire project of federated network identity did not begin within a civil society context, but rather was birthed among business people seeking to maximize profits. To date, online identity is treated the same way as an individual's credit history -- as information that exists as a result of commercial transactions, and so is the proprietary data of the company that captures it. These companies then have the legal right to do with this data as they see fit, including making it available to massive databases that centralize this information for resale. At the same time, your rights as a citizen to access and effect this same information are limited -- as anyone who has ever had to sort out errors in his official credit history can attest.

Affinity and Trusted Third Parties

The foundation for any interoperability between distinct web services (including online communities, e-stores, media distribution sites, etc.) that supports civil society is a form of persistent identity that each citizen can maintain for his or herself in accordance with the rights guaranteed to individuals in a free society. Without this approach to persistent identity, a public interest initiative like the ASN is unthinkable.

But in addition to this fundamental approach to persistent identity, in order to bring about the ASN a specific functionality would have to be part of each digital profile: the ability to express affinities and capabilities, and to list or assist in the discovery of other trusted individuals who share these interests.

Security

Certainly, everyone needs to maintain a vigilance regarding the security of their personal data. This will be one of the touchstone civil rights issues of the digital era -- who gets to know what about you, and how is it protected. At the same time, as mentioned above, it does little good for progressives to respond to this situation by affecting a Luddite position, using a 20th century model for "official identity" ("less is more") as the guide for policy in the 21st. Today's Internet security is reliable enough to support a working system of federated network identity. Online identity will become an ubiquitous part of daily life. The greatest danger to civil society is not that the data associated with digital profiles is open to theft and illegal activity, but rather the real possibility that a system of federated network identity that erodes civil liberties and the public commons comes into being -- while following the letter of the law.

Persistent Identity and the ASN

In life, we enter into social networks either because we are attracted to the ideas and activities at the center of a particular group, or we are introduced into the group by someone we know. The intent of the ASN is to bring an appropriate level of automation to this process, to make it more efficient and effective -- particularly when it comes to narrowly defined interests and projects. Today, many of us feel that the mainstream media is poorly equipped to provide us with the news and information we need to be effective citizens. At the same time, while we cognitively grasp the effect that globalization has on our lives, and the increasing interconnectedness between people from all parts of the globe, our tools for acting as citizens on this understanding are poor. Though the business world has created exceptional tools for acting globally (so that a decision made in a Cleveland boardroom can redirect activity at a Bangalore factory in a micro-second -- or vise versa), for individuals it is much more difficult to make efficient cross-border connections and to organize. The efficiencies in communications that digital technology have brought to large institutions should also be made available to citizens participating in the public commons. A civil society approach to federated network identity would provide the underpinnings necessary for the kinds of interactions that would strengthen the public commons. The ASN is one system that would take advantage of the civil society data in a digital profile -- but there could conceivably be many others.

III. Interoperability Between Online Community Infrastructures

Creating Value Through The Network Effect

"If you have two nodes, each with a value of one unit, the value of joining them is four units. Four interconnected nodes, each still worth one unit, is worth sixteen units when networked, and one hundred nodes is worth one hundred times one hundred, or ten thousand. When value increases exponentially more quickly than the total number of nodes, the mathematical consequence translates into economic leverage: Connecting two networks creates far more value than the sum of their values as independent networks."

For that reason, as community expert David Reed has written, "There is an enormous incentive to find ways to interconnect networks, since the members of each network can access a much larger set of potential transaction partners."14 In his paper "That Sneaky Exponential -- Beyond Metcalfe's Law to the Power of Community Building," Reed explains, "While many kinds of value grow proportionally to network size and some grow proportionally to the square of network size, I've discovered that some network structures create total value that can scale even faster than that. Networks that support the construction of communicating groups create value that scales exponentially with network size, i.e. much more rapidly than Metcalfe's square law." As Reed observed, connectivity between computers allowed for the creation of simple networks, but that online community tools enable the formation of networks that self-organize into groups. These Group Forming Networks (GFNs), as he calls them, are social networks that coalesce around common interests, issues, or goals. They represent an even greater value created by interconnectivity. "What I found," Reed wrote, "... is that GFN's create a new kind of connectivity value that scales exponentially..." This exponential growth in value created by the interconnection of social networks is known as Reed's Law.15

Extending Communities of Practice

Of the many kinds of social networks that exist online, the Augmented Social Network is concerned with only one: communities of practice. Unlike other forms of group engagement, communities of practice are organized around the achievement of specific objectives. As the social theorist Etienne Wenger defines them, communities of practice "are focused on a domain of knowledge and over time accumulate expertise in this domain. They develop their shared practice by interacting around problems, solutions, and insights, and building a common store of knowledge."17 He goes on to explain:

"The term 'communities of practice' is of relatively recent coinage, but the phenomenon it refers to is age-old and social scientists have talked about it under various guises. In a nutshell... [it] is a group of people who share an interest in a domain of human endeavor and engage in a process of collective learning that creates bonds between them: a tribe, a garage band, a group of engineers working on similar problems.

ASN Community Functionality

As discussed in the previous section, introductions in the ASN would take place in one of two ways: they would either be automated or brokered. Third party brokering services would likely be the preferred option among ASN users when the personal relationships involved are highly prized and carefully guarded. We address brokering services in the next section of this paper.

For less valuable or less sensitive relationships, the ASN interactions would be automated, and they would take place on the infrastructures of existing online communities. For example, if both Salon.com and Utne.com participate in the ASN, an automated introduction would be possible between a Salon member and an Utne member who share an affinity through their relationship with a trusted third party. The Salon and Utne infrastructures would facilitate the automated ASN interaction.

To support this activity, modularized enhancements to the technical infrastructures of online communities will need to be developed and adopted. These enhancements are essentially of two types: (1) the writing and adoption of interoperability protocols that enable communication between the membership management databases of distinct online communities, and (2) the development of modularized applications for the pre-processing and post-processing of email communications.

Interoperability Between Communities

ASN interoperability protocols will enable communication between the membership management databases of distinct online community infrastructures, so they can share ASN affinity-related data and provide automated interactions between individuals linked through trusted third parties. As discussed above, expressed affinities and capabilities would be kept as part of an individual's digital profile, managed by an identity service provider. ASN interoperability would allow for the exchange of this data between identity service providers and community infrastructures. These protocols would enable the infrastructures of Salon.com and Utne.com, for example, to make links between members who share affinities through the relationship each has to a mutual trusted third party. In addition, the protocols would enable the automated forwarding of media, and the creation of ad hoc social networks, based on expressed affinities with trusted third parties.

These protocols would establish a verifiable connection between each community member and his or her persistent identity, which would be maintained by an identity service provider. So whether you use six different names and present six different personas on a variety of different online communities, the membership management systems of those communities would have access to your persistent identities data. This introduces the potential for a dramatic shift in the way individuals present themselves in online environments, because, with such a system, anonymity online could become more difficult to maintain. In all likelihood, commercial federated network identity could well lead to the same result: the enforced continuity of persona in online environments. In fact, if commercial websites can turn persistent identity into additional revenue -- through merchandise sales, or special offers of fee-based content -- then the options for anonymity online are bound to shrink. Moreover, if commercial pressures ultimately determine the available forms of online representation, these formal options could easily succumb to the Hollywood blockbuster syndrome, and be reduced to a narrow range of obvious options, meant to appeal to the "lowest common denominator" consumer.

We believe it to be of the utmost importance that ASN interoperability protocols give individuals the broadest possible range of options regarding how they represent themselves in online environments. Identity in the real world is subtle, nuanced, and rich in its range of possibilities. The representation of self in digital media should similarly be multifarious and ambiguous, capable of reflecting an endless variety of interests, needs, desires, and relationships. A public interest approach to online identity, such as the ASN, could lead to the adoption of protocols that enable a wide range of possibilities for individual expression in online community environments. Commercial websites could then choose whether to make use of those protocols, or to ignore them. But the availability of agreed upon standards in the field would allow all websites, commercial or not-for-profit, to adopt them if they chose to.

Modular Community Applications

The ASN system will be accessed through email. Of course, that is not the only way that the ASN could work. Peer-to-peer and wireless technologies are emerging that might augment or replace email as the primary form of online communication in the years to come. It is the ubiquity of email that makes it attractive as a vehicle for the ASN. Since the system could be used to connect as many people as possible through trusted third parties, it is important that users be able to communicate with each other easily, using tools they are comfortable with. At the same time, nothing restricts the implementation of the ASN to email. The applications described below for email/community systems could be adapted for other forms of online communication, including peer-to-peer and wireless.

An ASN message will be one of three types:

Automated Introduction. An automated introduction to another person who shares affinities or has complementary capabilities, based on the recommendation of trusted third parties.
Forwarded Media. Articles, images or multimedia would be attached to an email message and forwarded among those who express shared affinities, based on the recommendations of trusted third parties
Ad Hoc Social Networks. An ad hoc social network would be initiated by an individual sending a request for participation in a narrowly defined project, and would be forwarded based on express affinities and the recommendations of trusted third parties. The resulting ad hoc community, or swarm, would dissolve with the completion of the stated objective.

Reputation

Over the last few years, reputation systems have appeared on websites and communities all over the Internet. Among the best known is eBay's, where buyers and sellers rate one another after completing transactions. Others range from Amazon.com, where buyers rate the reliability of used book sellers, to Epinions, where members rate the usefulness of the website's product reviews. As one article describes it, a "reputation system collects, distributes, and aggregates feedback about participants' past behavior."21 In situations where many, if not most, of the people involved are unknown to each other, trust is hard to build because strangers "do not have known past histories or the prospect of future interactions, and they are not subject to a network of informed individuals who will punish past behavior toward any of them. In some sense, a stranger's good name is not at stake."

The ASN moderates this potential problem by only providing connections through trusted third parties. Reports of bad behavior are likely to get back to the person who made the initial introduction, which should dissuade most from abusing the trust extended through the ASN. Of course, if you hear bad things about a person you had expressed a shared affinity with, you would probably modify your digital profile so that it no longer expressed a strong affinity with that person. In this way, reputation indirectly effects the management of trust in the ASN.

Current Community Systems

What kind of online community infrastructure best supports communities of practice? A community infrastructure can entail many things. The phrase "community infrastructure" is generally understood to have the broadest possible meaning: the integrated set of digital communications tools that allow members of a social network to communicate among themselves. This definition would include everything from a simple email listserv to a high end corporate intranet. The fact is, to this day, there is no agreed upon set of communications tools that constitutes a standard "online community infrastructure," let alone one that provides a specific tool set for communities of practice. Though some theorists might hypothesize about what one might be, we are far from seeing such a system.

In fact, the community-ware landscape today includes the products of some 90 different companies, all of whom offer one flavor or another of digital communications tools for social networks. Of course, not all of these lend themselves to use by communities of practice. Cynthia Typaldos' 12 Principles diagram suggests the range of social interactions within a community of practice that need to be taken into account by the technical infrastructure, and in the establishment of norms of behavior for the social network online.

IV. Public Interest Matching Technologies

The Purpose of Matching Technologies

The Semantic Web is the most prominent of a family of initiatives that can be grouped under the rubric "matching technologies." These matching technologies are advancing on many fronts. But, as might be expected, much of what is being done serves corporate rather than public interests. If these systems are not developed to address civil society topics, or are not designed to serve community infrastructures outside the corporate realm, then civil society discourse will be deeply impoverished. Today, matching technologies that could be used for civil society initiatives are only rarely being applied to them; the bulk of this work has catered to the needs of business. Because resources are not being put toward public interest applications of matching technologies, civil society groups lag behind the corporate sector in this important area. While commercial interests use the Internet with increasing effectiveness to access information about topics like energy, health, and food, civil society groups are left with no other option than use the semantic tools designed by the commercial sector (in the rare event that they even have access to them). In practice, this means that connections made online between relevant materials in a particular field will follow a map of meaning drawn by industry. As a result, connections that reflect alternative views of the same material might be increasingly difficult to come by. It would be as if the definitions in the Oxford English Dictionary were only written by businesses with a vested interest in them, with the final wording approved by the highest bidder.

Matching Technologies and Online Community

The ASN applies matching technologies to online community infrastructures in order to support the introduction of people based on common interests. It would integrate matching technologies into online communities at a high level. How would they enhance a user's experience of online community? They would help in these areas:

Representing personal identity and interests. Personal profiles in a community system are more useful (more automatable, discoverable, meaningful, and trustworthy) given shared agreements about the meaning of terminology. The technology for automated matchmaking and personal rights-management depends on matching standards being developed for the agent-mediated “semantic web”.
Representing community identity and interests. A community can present itself more clearly to others if its guiding interests and activities are described rigorously.
Improved access to community documentation.
Improved access to external documentation, using navigation aids prepared by one’s community or the community owning the external documentation, or by a third party. Navigation aids are shared. Furthermore, new insight might come from combining navigation aids.
Improved knowledge sharing. Knowledge from a specific community often has value beyond its community of origin.
Knowledge creation from ordinary work practices. Collaborative filtering and other knowledge extraction technologies can aggregate community knowledge without extra work in assembling information.
Improved relevance in message routing and news services. * Ontologies can codify practices as well as descriptions.
Ontologies could potentially codify personal relationship types. Agents could broker introductions. Codified relations can be transitive, within limits.

Federating Meaning, Decentralizing Knowledge

“Communities of interest are defined by their worldviews, and whenever a community of interest rigorously exposes its worldview in a fashion that permits its knowledge to be federated with the worldviews and knowledge of other communities, the whole human family is enriched” -- Steven Newcomb

Can online communities better collect, represent, and share the meanings of the content they produce so that the collective knowledge of communities can be more available to others? Implicit in this question is a concern with the way online content is organized and classified, in order to make its meaning more accessible. It is an approach that leads to software and standards that overlay content with rich descriptions of meaning and association. Once the content is "understood" by the system, it becomes possible to make relevant matches between items.

This approach to matching technologies relies on the implementation of sophisticated ontologies and taxonomies -- broad, structured maps of meaning, and carefully honed definitions that pinpoint each subject's place on that broad map. Sometimes referred to as "knowledge mapping," this technique provides a framework for the organizing of content so users can access it by navigating a familiar field of meanings. For a system like the Semantic Web, ontologies and taxonomies are key.

Tacit Knowledge

Extracting tacit knowledge from online content, bringing knowledge to the surface where it had previously gone unnoticed, has become a hot topic in certain IT circles. The approach of looking for patterns that emerge from the online actions of individuals, or that can be identified by analyzing a set of online content, has proven to be extremely powerful. The public first became aware of these kinds of tools in the mid-1990s, when a music website named Firefly introduced a technology known as "collaborative filtering." Once a user expressed preferences for certain artists, the website would be able to recommend other artists that the user might find of interest -- based strictly on the preference patterns expressed by other users.

In recent years, the concepts underlying this approach have been expanded in a wide variety of ways. They have led to the recommender systems now common on e- commerce sites, like Amazon.com. The technique has proven less successful on community sites, where its utility has not been clear. This might be because discernable patterns may not emerge among communities that are not engaged in easily definable objectives. It is possible that tacit knowledge techniques work best among communities of practice.

V. Brokering Services

The Introduction Protocol

Clearly the ASN needs to provide a range of introduction options, so users can choose what is right for them. These options, and the rules they would follow, would be determined by a set of "introduction protocols" -- explicit instructions about the sequence of actions that would automatically take place before an introduction is facilitated through a trusted third party.

In most cases, it is likely that the introduction protocol would not need to be particularly sensitive to cultural differences or complex social dynamics. As with email, live chat, or SMS (mobile phone texting), people from a wide range of backgrounds will figure out their own personal comfort zone for using a standard set of simple tools. They will likely shape their use of the ASN to fit their own cultural expectations for social interaction, as long as the system is easy to use, respects privacy, and has utility. For these circumstances, which should be the vast majority, there would be a "plain vanilla" introduction protocol that brokers basic introductions within existing online community systems, as discussed in Section III.

Specialized Brokers, Customized Introductions

Customized introduction protocols and services could be designed for a wide variety of situations. Among them are:

Verifying reputations before completing matches. Because reputation depends on social context, an individual's persistent identity should not include any kind of "reputation rating." Still, when you enter a new online community, and make claims about your past that are relevant to that community, reputation checks make sense. A reputation check on a global hunger brokering service, for example, could provide the vetting necessary to solve the "Bono Dilemma."
Brokering introductions between people from different cultures. Chinese and New Yorkers, to cite one of an infinite choice of examples, follow sharply different cultural practices in the establishment of trust between people. Special introduction protocols could help negotiate these differences by automating steps in the formation of trust that bridge the distance between cultures.
Cross-referencing different matching technologies for better matches. Above we discussed the value of comparing different ontological frameworks of the same set of data. A brokering service could automate this process, to give greater depth to searches made by its users. For example, a global hunger brokering service might layer the ontological frameworks written by African-based NGOs, the UN, the EU, and the World Bank, each of which would bring different readings and associations to the data set -- leading to search results that make unexpected connections, and particularly useful matches. In addition, it might cross-reference those results with a tacit knowledge recommender system built into the bulletin boards on Jubilee 2000's website. In this way, the global hunger brokering service could provide extremely useful matches meant for an expert constituency.
Using real-life intermediaries to make solicitations. There will be times when an automated introduction simply won't do. In those situations, brokering services could offer trusted, real-life intermediaries to make an initial solicitation. If that solicitation is accepted, than an introduction would take place.

Current Brokering Systems

Many websites today have some kind of introduction service. We discussed some of these earlier, in the context of matching technologies. For example, Amazon.com's recommender system matches people with books they might be interested in. From the standpoint of the underlying technology, matching people to books is not hugely different than matching people to one another. For that reason, the tacit knowledge approach that drives a book recommender is quite similar to the mechanisms used by advanced corporate intranets with sophisticated knowledge management systems. The intranet, though, is designed to connect employees who are working on complementary projects. These and other matching technologies are used on dating sites like Match.com (which claims responsibility for over 1,200 marriages and 50 babies!).

Most of these systems, though, are meant to serve narrow purposes. They are not designed to be interoperable, to exchange information with other sites. Moreover, the brokering mechanisms they use tend to be limited (customized around one ontological framework, meant for a very specific context and use) and proprietary. While the core technology is similar, these implementations are not appropriate for the kind of Internet- wide relationship and knowledge sharing called for by the ASN. They don't use anything resembling an introduction protocol that could be used by others.

A number of online communities, however, have begun to develop tools meant to engender various types of networks of trust, and they point in the direction of an Internet- wide system like the ASN.

Part 3: Strategies for Implementation

I. Software Development in the Public Interest

The necessary technology for the Augmented Social Network might already exist, but making the ASN real will be a challenge. It will require an effort far beyond any software development that civil society organizations have achieved to date. Of course, many more complicated technical projects that effect the Internet are accomplished all the time. But those efforts tend to start with the communications or software industry, and are shepherded by well-funded organizations that represent industry interests. Funding for these projects are based on business plans that anticipate profits. Needless to say, the ASN doesn't lend itself to this kind of approach. (It is worth recalling that neither email nor the Web were justified by business plans when they were invented, nor would that have even been possible.)

Suffice it to say that the ASN is unlikely to become an industry priority. It does not offer immediate avenues to profitability. Some aspects of it -- such as the writing and updating of public interest matching technologies -- will probably always have to be subsidized. Others challenge current assumptions in the business models of for-profit online communities, which have been deliberately designed as "walled castles" that do not permit interoperability. In the business world, legacy attitudes about intellectual property and the jealous guarding of customer information have trouble accommodating the 21st century realities of data flow and online collaborative behavior. Even if business leaders "get it," it is doubtful they will lead the charge for the ASN. That should not be surprising, since the ASN is designed in no small part to correct the oversights of the business community as it expands capabilities on the Internet. This work, by its very nature, has to be led by the civil society sector.

Hybrid Approach

The writing and adoption of standards is a complex matter. Moreover, the ASN faces an additional challenge because it requires coordination between technical disciplines that have no experience collaborating with one another. It remains with the civil society sector to facilitate this activity.

But once the ASN is in place, it offers a range of opportunity for companies that could generate revenue by providing features of the overall system. These include:

Community sites that have incorporated ASN functionality.
Personal identity companies that offer identity services that cater to specific communities.
Boutique brokering services that charge for specialized introductions.
Specialized search services that use customized ontological frameworks.

As with email or the Web, ASN functionality could become a core part of the Internet experience -- as well as a revenue source for profitable businesses that provide online services.

II. Principles for Implementation

Open Standards. For this system to be broadly adopted, it must be transparent so that all of the entities that participate in it are reasonably assured of its trustworthiness. This means that the software code that enables the system should be non-proprietary and freely available, and that the process by which the software is written and the standards enacted should be open to the highest levels of scrutiny.
Interoperability. Our vision is of an Internet with more bridges and fewer walls, where the individual can travel easily between communities. To enact this vision, online communities need to consider ways of being open to one another. Interoperability between diverse environments and ontological frameworks is central to this effort.
Inclusivity. For the system to successfully draw in the largest possible number of participants, and to enable free connection between potential correspondents, it must be designed to embrace every online community that agrees to its standards and principles. In this regard, the ASN must be value-neutral, open, and inclusive, not unlike the open connectivity of the underlying Internet protocols.
Respect for Privacy. The ASN should be a galvanizing force for the strengthening of privacy protections online, in support of a thriving civil society. Every person online must be certain that private information remains private, and that neither governments nor commercial interests will use this information in any way without the individual's knowledge and expressed permission.
Decentralization. The Internet works best when systems are not commanded from the top down, but rather emerge from the bottom up -- and are then adopted on a voluntary basis, in a manner that best suits the specific needs of the distinct communities that together comprise the Net's totality. We are in favor of an "opt-in" system, rather than one commanded by a government or commercial authority. For that reason, our approach is to develop software and standards that can be added to existing community operating systems in a modular fashion -- so they do not have to rewrite their software from scratch, but rather can "plug-in" these modules to their existing infrastructures. Similarly, the ASN would support decentralized structures for the maintenance of persistent identity and ontological frameworks.

III. Recommendations

Establishing an ASN coordinating body. The ASN effort needs to be led by a public interest, not-for-profit body that articulates its mission, advances its objectives, and commissions and coordinates efforts in a variety of different fields that together contribute to the creation of the ASN. An important aspect of this work would be to bring the ASN vision for the "next generation" Internet to the public, creating an international constituency to support this work.
Convening a board of technical advisors. An interdisciplinary team of engineers should prepare a detailed technical architecture for the ASN. This team should report to a board composed of highly regarded technical advisors, who would review and vet the architecture, and guide the technical growth of the system. The board would also review the technical work done by ASN engineers who develop software and protocols.
Providing a dedicated engineer to represent the public interest at standards bodies working on persistent identity. An engineer expert in the area of persistent identity should be sent to take part in the critical standards meetings of the Liberty Alliance, Passport's .Net initiative, and other efforts to introduce persistent identity. This engineer should push for standards that will insure the implementation of civil society-oriented "affinity references," as well as their availability to interact with "introduction protocols." In addition, this person should vigorously present a civil society perspective on privacy and public commons issues.
Co-develop basic ASN functionality with select online community companies. Basic ASN community functionality should be developed through a pilot project that involves a small number of communityware companies open to collaborating on key issues such as: interoperability, affinity based introductions, and ontological frameworks. This work would include the writing of the introduction protocol. This pilot project would be a testing ground for the implementation of ASN functionality as it develops. Ideally, at least one of these online communities would include the active participation of one or more NGOs, in a particular field, in order to test the effectiveness of the ASN under the stresses and strains of actual use. It could also include the participation of one or more of the independent brokering services now developing technology for corporate intranets.
A dedicated team would coordinate implementation of matching technologies for the public interest sector. The ASN effort should act as a catalyst to bring attention and support to the development of ontologies and taxonomies for the public interest sector. A pilot project to begin this work should be initiated in collaboration with one or more NGOs.

Appendices

A. Acknowledgements

This paper is the product of a two-year process involving over fifty professionals from the fields of network computing, independent media, and environmental activism. A core group of 25 was initially convened in Ben Lomand, California, in September 2000 by Brad deGraf. They were invited to address ways of using the Internet to establish a global network of people concerned about the future of the environment that could number in the many millions. Rarely had engineers, activists, and media professionals been part of the same extended conversation about the potential of networked digital communications to serve the public interest. The dialogue was more than stimulating, and the group decided to form an organization to give further shape to ideas introduced that weekend. A half dozen more weekend sessions followed over the next 18 months, as well as a flurry of off-line conversations and parallel projects. In time, a vision took shape for a next- generation online community that provides people across the globe with better tools to take part in democratic action and to collaboratively organize their resources in order to promote environmental sustainability. The ASN is a core component of this broader vision, and each participant in the group discussions contributed to the development of this vision. The voting members of the group, which eventually took the name Link Tank, are: Debra Amador, Juliette Beck, Jack Bradin, Bruce Cahan, Brad deGraf, Bonnie DeVarco, Andres Edwards, Jim Fournier, Steve Foster, Chris Gallagher, Lev Gonick, Jan Hauser, James Hung, Allen Hunt-Badiner, Ken Jordan, Michael Litz , Richard Perl, Christie Rothenberg , Neil Sieling, Greg Steltenpohl, Elizabeth Thompson, Hardin Tibbs, Michael Tolson, Amie Weinberg, and Nate Zelnick. Among the informal advisors to the group, who took part in some of the meetings or online discussions, were: Jeffrey Alexrod, Owen Davis, Gerald de Jong, Tom Laskawy , Tom Munnecke, Robin Mudge, Ellen Pearlman, Jonathan Peizer, Richard White, and Duncan Work.

In January, 2002, Link Tank commissioned Jan Hauser, Steven Foster, and Ken Jordan to prepare a white paper that demonstrates the feasibility of the ASN's vision of online community by describing a technical architecture that could achieve this vision. Jan and Steve developed the core elements of the ASN architecture, and wrote a first draft describing its technical components. Ken wrote a much-expanded second draft based on the first, helped to complete the technical architecture, and added the political analysis. The three revised the paper in collaboration.

The authors would like to thank Cynthia Typaldos and Mark S. Miller for their contributions to the ideas expressed in this paper. We also want to acknowledge the influence of Dee Hock's theoretical work on chaordic organizations. Our gratitude goes out to the Chaordic Commons, whose support was instrumental in the preparation of this paper. Lastly, we extend our thanks to Neil Sieling, who managed this process for the Link Tank, for his valuable feedback to drafts in revision.

B. About The Authors

Ken Jordan

Ken Jordan is one of the pioneers of Web-based multimedia. In 1995 he led the development and served as founding editorial director of SonicNet.com, the first multimedia music zine. SonicNet was named best website of 1995 by Entertainment Weekly and won the first Webby award for music site before becoming a property of MTV. In 1996 Mr. Jordan became creative director of Icon New Media, publisher of two seminal, award-winning online magazines: the general interest zine Word.com, and the action sports site Charged.com. In 1999, he co-founded the public interest portal MediaChannel.org, in partnership with Globalvision and the international civil society network OneWorld.net; it was OneWorld's first U.S. based project. He is currently a writer and digital media consultant based in New York, and Director of the Art and Culture Network.

Ken is co-editor of Multimedia: From Wagner to Virtual Reality (W.W. Norton, 2001), an anthology of seminal articles that trace the "secret" history of digital multimedia; the book is widely taught at colleges and universities around the world. Outside the digital realm, he collaborated with the playwright and director Richard Foreman on the book Unbalancing Acts: Foundations for a Theater (Pantheon, 1992).

Jan Hauser

Jan Hauser is currently a Business Development Manager at Science Application International Corporation (SAIC) and is also a visiting professor at the Naval Postgraduate School, in Monterey California. At SAIC Jan focuses on business development of SAIC’s Latent Symantec Indexing Product (LSI). This product is capable of discovering and matching “concepts” which it discovers in unstructured text. LSI functions independent of what native language these concepts are expressed in and also works independent of the various terminologies used by individuals to express their concepts.

Jan was formerly principle architect at Sun Microsystems where he was responsible for Sun’s membership in The Santa Fe Institute (SFI). Jan has been a catalyst for the application of Complexity Science to business, social, and environmental problems. In this pursuit he co-organized a workshop with The Institute For The Future (IFTF) - Growing At the Edge: The New Corporate Structures for Innovation and the Challenge of Governance. Jan has worked on the development of Sun’s architecture for automated markets, Electronic Trade Exchanges, and principals that lead to the emergence of "communities" of trading partners. He currently spends much of his personal time working on problems of "Global Sustainability." Jan has also worked with Dee Hock, founder of VISA International, in the development of new organizational models and implementations of so called "Chaordic," or self- organizing institutional forms, which were included in Sun’s Jini community, design. This work led Jan to focus his energies on promoting the development and adoption of technologies that would support the emergence of "Chaord Light," a means of exploiting the internet in catalyzing latent “Social Networks” based on shared or complementary interests and capabilities combined with the transitive nature of trust amongst people who know each other indirectly through our “six degrees” of our personal knowledge and connectivity.

Steven Foster

Steven Foster is a pioneer in Internet resource discovery. In 1992 he designed and developed the first comprehensive Internet search engine, Veronica, which became the most active service on the Internet in 1994. He has consulted widely in the application of search technology to education and telecommunications. In 1998 he began work on applying markup and metadata to improve automated comparison of structured professional vocabularies. At present Steven researches the applications of semantic technologies to email analysis and web services.

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The Augmented Social Network (Abridged)