Wednesday, March 22, 2006
Towards A Common Core: Step One - Solidifying Expression through Unifying Identity
Category: Web, HTML, Tech
Before this week, I had never heard of the term "Attention". I like
Seth Goldstein,
Michael Goldhaber and
AttentionTrust's pioneering work in codifying what they believe will be the principle object of Web 2.0: building, managing, sharing and exchanging the myriad interactions that we have with information.
This information about our information, our unique metadata stream, when properly harnessed is the first step in building out the Core in such a way that personalization and affinity have specific meaning. My interest in Audi's may be just like ten million other people, or it may specifically only be in the GmbH developed quattro line. Or it may more specifically only revolve around the new 2006 RS4. If my attention is only drawn to the RS4, then on an aspirational level, Audi may turn me off as a customer if they start presenting "special offers on the A3 for qualified buyers" to my attention stream.
How, then does one narrow attention?
Man, as it turns out has three natural demarcations along the edges of his complete persona. They are the following:
1. The view of myself, I alone see. (aka the "mirror").
2. The view of myself, I allow others to see (aka the "face")
3. The view of myself which the world sees (aka the "avatar")
In this approach, the most goverened represenatation of self, of attention, is the closely guarded "mirror-self". These are the actions for which I am willing to take direct responsibility and own the reprecussions. This is my conctractual and financial view of myself. This self can enter into binding agreements or execute my estate. Views of this self would be limited to myself and profoundly trusted organizations.
The second trust sphere centers around the "personal" self. That is the social self that interacts with trusted members of a social network. Friends, buddies, partners, those with whom I freely share a portion of my personal information in order to build comraderie and general community. On a day to day basis the Expression of the social self can lead to the sharing of data on people, objects and organizations that is the key value of the Core.
The final trust sphere is the public or professional self. This is the self that is most accessible because of the multitude of instances it interacts with the world. Yet at the same time, by design, this is also the least knowable Expression of the self. The Avatar is not the face, but a mask over the face because key private or personal data is not necessary for exchange of attention information at that level.
This blog begins with the title of "Unifying Identity" yet what I have presented here is a three-fold view of identity. So now I can imagine the reader is parroting a question that his been asked throughout the ages, "How can trinity represent unity?"
This is not coincidence. Because the Core will contain the published Expression of all creative, original data, it is critical that there be a codification of the interaction between individuals and these attention streams at a fundamental level. The natural demarcation of the trust spheres allows for that.
A very simplified example of the benefit of trust spheres is messaging. Basically in their various forms there are three types of messages which are the following:
1. One-to-One messages. Such as most emails and most text messages, phone calls and chats.
2. One-to-Many messages. Such as blogs, announcements or bulletins Comments are a reverse Many-to-one message.
3. Many-to-Many messages. Such as message boards
With time one realizes that these three distinct Attention streams parallel the three Expressions of the self. My private, secure self transmits and receives one-to-one messages. My social self transmits and receives one-to-many/many-to-one messages. My public self, being the most gregarious and common Expression of my attention gives and receives many-to-many messages.
The true power of Expression of the self in the three realms comes when one begins to incorporate the users rules-based view. If I set filters on the kinds of many-to-one messages I can receive "I want to know JenX's Amazon purchases but not her eBay auction wins", then I filter the messages that receive my Attention based on the rules I have tied to my Expression in that trust sphere. The power of this unified, rules based approach to Attention, which is the fundamental of Expression is enormous. No organization or individual really needs to know my address to deliver goods to me: They simply need to know that the Avatar has expressed interest in their goods or products. The correct routing and fulfilment of physical goods or even electronic messages should happen has a result.
So then Expression, is the rules-set based filtering of Attention based on the three realms of Self.
In the next post we will come back to Expression and deal with the Unifying Identity aspect.
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