1K/ Mee - Consumer focused, tech agnostic, identity metasystem, nonprofit, open source motherhood, apple pie

Mee.foundation

Session Convener: Paul Trevithick

Notes-taker(s): Michael Becker

Tags / links to resources / technology discussed, related to this session:

Discussion notes, key understandings, outstanding questions, observations, and, if appropriate to this discussion: action items, next steps:

Mee.foundation

Mee Foundation (mee.foundation) Paul Trevithick has founded a non-profit looking to help people get control over a dataset of me (using both technical and legal/governance means)

• He wants to start over again, i.e. the tech, the market model, etc building on earlier work
• Does not believe the market is human-centered
• Status quo has gotten worse “More power in the hands of fewer”
• Personal Data and Identity is too valuable to be commercialized
• People are the ones to release their information
• We are not monolithic, we are highly contextual, “multi-contextually matters”, we should be able to present ourselves as we wish

Attendees:

• Kimberly Wilson - Randa Solutions. credential Publisher in ND and Teacher licensor program
• Alexander Castro - 2060.io CE)
• Randy Farmer, Exec. Direct Spritely. institute
• Michael Becker
• Paul Trevithick
• Jeff Orgel - Computer Guy
• Damon Tinball Randa Solution CIO
• Doc Searls
• Nara
• Philip
• Wendell Baker

What’s the idea

• Mee is not a new identity system. It introduces no new technology. It is an identity metasystem.
• It’s an extensible software framework that existing technologies can plug into. And a legal framework that supports various levels of governance of personal data from the user’s agent.
• Analogous (from an end-user point of view) to Visa. Visa provides an “Interoperability Promise”; it does not provide the cards; the bank does. Visa provides the infrastructure and guidelines.
• Mee logo is a service mark that individuals can see to know a participating service allows for self-sovereign identity.

Complimentary models

We discussed complimentary models, e.g., Me2B and Irene Ng’s Dataswift. There are opportunities to merge this idea with other initiatives, like them

Relevant technologies

• Liam Broza, Co-Founder at Laguna Labs, LifeScope.io
• Johannes Ernst, Indie Computing Corp., has a solution to pull social data

Themes:

• Life is local
• Mee assumes a nuanced, contextualized model of a person’s data
• Mee assumes a contract between the individual (or more precisely Mee acting as their fiduciary) and the app/business/other. In the discussion we agreed that a contract isn’t always needed (e.g. self-governing social groups)
• On the verge to being big: $0 trillion-dollar industry (so much potential but unclear if anyone is making money)
• Status quo has gotten worse “More power in the hands of fewer”; Just giving power to the billionaires
• What is common about everything is the human being; we are the center of integration
• Opportunity to revolutionize commerce – what would happen if “I were” were in control
• Solution ideas
  • Start with the user
  • Offer a digital twin that knows all about the user
  • This twin is the foundation for Personal AI
  • The twin can express intent, say what we want to buy
  • Let be a conduit of our medical records, government records
• User centricity
• Decentralized architecture
• Power to the people
• Phil Windley Quote: “Networks can not exist without a means to move value from the edge of the network to the center of the network.” “The Internet was a happy accident because it had that ability value transaction–billing–at the center.”
• Kim Cameron proposed an identity “metasystem,” not an identity system. Mee is a continuation of that approach.

Questions

• How do we build a software framework?
• How do we build the legal framework?

References

• Filter Bubble Ted Talk: ad systems are built on a bad model of you. Assumption: “Homo Consumerous.” You are always buying.
• IEEE P7012 - Machine-readable personal privacy terms - People set their only terms of service.
• ePrivacy regulations
• The Twitter - the “Fail Whale” - could not handle the number user wants to use the system. Hit a hard wall on millions of users. Put a block on the scope. Once fixed, the *Internet did not need to solve the identity problem.