Goodmorning,

Just today I was reading a bit in my old text
https://www.networkcultures.org/_uploads/notebook2_theinternetofthings.pdf
And found that idea that in between the city of control and feral cities (breakdown) lies the city of trust.
I think I made some steps towards that and I thought why not share it?

The original premisse stands. As I felt then: we are in the endgame of the unimaginative and devoid of empathy intelligence of the ‘maker/engineer’ - and it looks like it is dying but its demise will be painful and troubling. I am not into any ‘conspiracy theory’ but it cannot be denied that the COVID-19 response (social distancing, mouth masks in, public places in some places like here in the inner city of Ghent) actually have the effect that Tiggun foreshadowed in “Introduction to Civil War” as the solution to the ultimate fear of Empire which is not a gathering of minds but a gathering of bodies and their corporeal affordances..

In doubt,; but not intent on a 250 euro fine- I put up my mask just a little bit in the masked zone as I went to the bakery this morning to get our good old rogge zuurdesem (tastes like peperkoek). I felt quite dumb and humiliated as there was hardly anyone around on Sunday morning, but I also felt that I did not want to make a spectacle cycling past the few strollers who felt the same buit making them feel like suckers for putting it on, so in a strange sense of solidarity (of course I do not mind wearing it in stores where the workers have to wear it all day, that is just plain decency) I cycle up to the bakery, feeling bad and radiating anger. And as I stand inside radiating bad energy (even, though I know how stupid it is) I see a little girl looking at me with her father who is I think sort of pleading with his eyes to act a bit friendly. Imagine the kids growing up like this. Will they ever complain of surveillance, atomic cubicles for study or work, long for cuddling a stranger, feel at home in a crowd? They are straight up bred to live in the space ship that is the ultimate dream of the digital transition mindset as Matrix.
OK.

One thing I learned is that I am too focused on ‘intent’, and ‘why’ and agency. Sometimes it pays just to assess the situation and what it entails and brings.
So what did I find in these last thirteen years, working as an ontological ethnographer, becoming an IoT Influencer, helping to build IoT ecosystems for companies like Evrythng (in an EU project like Tagitsmart.eu) and now in recent times setting up workshops and research on identity in another project NGI. Forward?
Overall I found very little evil, but mainly a massive convergence of arguments and feelings that made digital/technical solutions to fear (any kind off) logical, affordable, timely and. ‘Inevitable’.
Any form of opposition I immediately think of, I have described inn 2007
https://www.networkcultures.org/_uploads/notebook2_theinternetofthings.pdf
Resist internally, oppose, hack, walk away from, and dealt with as ineffective, still holds true. The only way forward is to take. Over the full imaginary of the entire situation. That is why I set op iotday.org and theinternetofthings.eu Naive yes, but I also did not have anything better to do.
I thin k now I am on to something, co-created with many others.

One.

The first thing we need to do is to break identity to the core, take it away from .gov and .biz so the course is Self Sovereign Identity + disposable identities (see disposableidenties.eu)

Any system built, however benevolently on the one person - one number framework, will tend to gather and use more and more data. As such it is the heart of the matter that needs to be ‘broken’ in order for a seamless connectivity to be not just adopted but welcomed by all generations in society.
https://www.disposableidentities.eu/rob-van-kranenburg-disposable-id-why-debate-identity-happening-now-and-why-it-so-important

A Disposable Identity is made from service or domain specific personal data and allows the subject to prove ownership over these data, without permitting anybody else to make (present or future) correlations between them and the subject's true identity. Essentially, a subject for navigating within cold spots, can generate many purpose-oriented “disposable” credentials, which are linked to different DIDs over which a person has ownership or control, Decentralized Identifier (DID) is used to describe an identifier that is public discoverable using for example a distributed ledger. However, the public nature of a DID should not be mistaken for a potential user tracing enabler. Indeed, user DIDs need not disclose anything more than endpoints and cryptographic public keys. Only the subject themselves can make the correlation between the different DID under their ownership (non-linkable).

Furthermore, a Disposable Identity (or, better, a disposable proof of identity should point somehow to an “Official Identity” and in that way is distinct from broader concepts of personal and social identity that may be relevant for unofficial purposes (e.g., unregulated commercial or social, peer-to-peer interactions in person or on the Internet). In other terms, there is always a possibility to align a Disposable Proof of Identity (DPI) to an official identity; if requested, a disposable proof of identity can be explicitly linked to an Official Identity (National ID, eIDAS eID , Online Passport) via a “Verifiable Presentation”.

A mobile SDK is being co-created with zenroom inside as a commercial project for Colruyt.:Join the Telegram Channel to contribute the community on disposable identities of the Foundation Twinds (io)
https://t.me/joinchat/PVV8JxfWegIq3SlFMuS1Gg

I am involved in other demos coming up soon.

Two

As we can not stall or prevent the smart city we propose zones of connectivity: hot spots are fully 5G 6G AR/VR/ smart everything hubs:. We can have just a little bit of agency here.

However we also propose 'cold spots'. That is what I am going to ficus on in the next decade: coaching myself and others in internal resilience.

Jean Nloël has done a lot of work in this space. Also the techno-shamanism group has kept open a thin line to old trusted sources of being. And wisdom.

From our text:

Whereas the hotspot is built on technical standards for the CPS/Internet of Things, cold spots are foreground for social trust standards in the Internet of People (Nold and van Kranenburg 2011). Cold zones would allow future urban residents a secluded period. An episode of digital interruption and think-time, more collective awareness and ‘suspension of disbelief’ as psychologists call it. The gift of time and space is crucial and valuable, an almost lost feature of urban modernity and hyperconnectivity, with its restlessness and always on screen-addiction anxieties. Cold zones allow humans an increased awareness of the temporality of life on earth (a phenomenological, sensory, an experimental sand-boxing experience). In addition to the On-Life initiative and H2020 Responsible Research and Innovation, the S+T+Arts (Science Technology and the Arts programme of DG CNECT) links to our approach. The aim is urban regeneration through a creative space, open for technologists and artists to challenge the ‘status quo’ and to stimulate others to perceive the new engineered realities.

Cold spots are opposed to the officiality of hot spots: while these are spaces where societal macro rules and history are encoded, cold spots offer citizens the possibility to perform the environment freely, according to their own micro-history and imagination. This duality is the contemporary version of what De Certau (1984) was conceptualising by distinguishing between strategies and tactics, a top-down city and a bottom-up one. Speaking of the second, he wrote “The networks of these moving, intersecting writings compose a manifold story that has neither author nor spectator, shaped out of fragments of trajectories and alterations of spaces: in relation to representations, it remains daily and indefinitely other” and also “they are not localized; it is rather that they spatialize.” If space is hybrid, so is culture. For Homi K. Bhabha‘s (1996) theory of cultural hybridization “all forms of culture are continually in a process of hybridity”.

So I feel I have come a bit full circle and found new openings, like crumbs of bread we leave. Behind so a diminishing group of likeminded might find their sense common and inevitable in its own ways,

Salut, Rob


The results of the interaction in the ecosystem as related in this report is published in two book chapters that I can share soon when they are edited fully and online:

o    Forthcoming 2020. Zones of Connectivity, hot spots and cold spots. In: Handbook of Smart Cities, Springer (ed. Juan Carlos August) Lead author with multiple authors from the NGI Forward ecosystem, including Gaëlle Le Gars.
Abstract: We tie the Smart Cities concept to the On-Life human-centred vision.  The need to provide citizen-focused empowering visions of smart cities planning and development is very much needed, especially when a post-Covid environment requires urban growth 'resets' within stringent sustainability limits. Our selected case studies describe some of these current challenges. Two novel utopian visions of technology are proposed: urban ‘cold spots’ and ‘disposable identities’. The aim is to safeguard human digital rights in the digital smart urban sphere; our cherished freedom of expression, privacy, autonomy, and civic assembly. The chapter has three parts, the limits of smartness, the IoT, 5G and 6G technology developments of cyber physical systems, and the need to choose a suitable form of identity management. Authors bring together their  intra-disciplinary approach. 

o    Forthcoming 2020. Why digital identity matters for blockchain disintermediation. In: Disintermediation Economics: Markets, Policies, and Blockchain, Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan - New York (eds. Dimitris Psarrakis and Eva Kaili). Co-author with Gaëlle Le Gars.
Abstract: The Narrative of this book shows how blockchains are a disruptive element in the economics of disintermediation. This chapter argues that, yes, we can do smart contracts or more precisely blockchain-based DLTs. However, without accounting for the identity dimension of this problem there is little chance that these will work, and the innovation potential will not be realized. We address why identity technologies matter. We explain why the treaty safeguards important elements of this identity framework. We will explain what drives the recent push towards self-sovereign identities, as compared to other choices. Finally, we will argue that on the basis of EU legislation it is urgent to address the identity technology sphere in terms of the translation into the digital realm of fundamental rights and values. These include especially trust, accountability and autonomy.