The objective of this project is to develop a taxonomy to bridge the gap between digital solutions aiming to facilitate human economic activity and the practical requirements needed to enforce obligations in the physical realm - i.e. provide evidence which legally holds up in their relevant jurisdictions. Interoperability needs to necessarily start on the natural language level, moving to the semantic level (where necessary within the appropriate discipline), further to linguistics, and finally to high-level coding language. - As such we are starting with a simple Wiki, and list of terms which require IRL definitions before creating project outlines for (decentralized) software solutions, in particular blockchains and graphs. The wider objective is to facilitate the development of a human-centered network (web), in which individuals regain control over the feedback mechanisms technologies provide to them.
Please note: this is not a philosophical ‘exercise’ but rather a practical approach, which presupposes that a central tenet of innovation through technology is the increase of human productivity, freeing up individuals attention - measured in time - that these can (deliberately) assign to leisure activities or higher order pursuits, such as the accumulation of knowledge or wealth.
Engineers introducing the designation identity to describe objectives or operational aspects of technology, regularly fail to establish a functional definition of the term before committing the concept to source code. Despite disagreements among scholars of social sciences, philosophers, and psychologists about many facets of identity, a general consensus about its uniquely human quality can be observed. Further separating human beings from objects and other living organisms are the ability to self-reflect and form intentions. Aside from situational and/or reflexive expressions, the basis for the latter is most often rooted in the sum of experiences, and memories thereof. Baring significant advances in human brain-monitoring technologies, engineering efforts serving human intentions thus far are limited to levels of observance and interpretation. In so far as this threshold is breached by technical implementations - i.e. software-assisted “social engineering” (a form of “hacking” human-assisted processes), definitions must allow for the attribution of human agency.
NOTE: At the time of this update (07/02/2021), there are no known technologies addressing identity management . Solutions using the latter description can readily be re-classified by the type and purpose of data collection: i.e. identification, including (for) access management and authentication, profiling, certification, etc.
