All,
Have you ever gone through security at a DoD facility or looked at
the DoD identification process? It contains three (3) items:
° Something you are, (fingerprint, biometric, etc)
° Something you have, and (a badge or ID)
° and something you know. (a password)
Industry is looking to add a 4th to this list: "Something you do".
Basically, the act of playing a game or sequence of motions is
used to create a profile of your responses that can be predictive.
An article in Scientific American explains the concept:
Forget Passwords: How Playing Games Can Make Computers More
Secure
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/computer-game-for-security/
-John Bottoms
FirstStar Systems
Concord, MA USA
On 10/22/2014 10:19 PM, Hans Polzer wrote:
Thanks
for your observations, Frank. They align with my own
experiences and thinking in this area.
Regarding
your last observation:
“But, I also
think that identification of *physical* objects might
never or not for a long time be replicatable with
information about the object that can be captured on a
computer. “
My
sense is that a lot of work with bar codes and RF ID, the
Internet of Things, as well as in the biometrics area is an
ongoing/increasing effort to create physically
detectable/readable identifiers for physical objects that
can be manipulated in cyberspace (along with other useful
characteristics of the physical object). It also seems to me
that there has been a growing trend to use DNA-based
biometrics as the basis for the best or most natural
“inherent” identity for people. Of course, we don’t
(generally) think of ourselves as being our DNA. But
somewhat ironically, I think our DNA imbues us with
self-awareness, facial recognition, and “mirror” neurons
that seem to give us a sense that others we encounter in the
environment have a specific identity. Perhaps the very
notion of identity is an anthropomorphic manifestation of
our inherent biology?
I’ll
also note that the US DoD has been chasing the notion of
assigning an IP address to just about everything for some
time. This idea has now been adopted more broadly with the
meme “the Internet of Things”, which puts a little more
emphasis on some level of intelligence/autonomy in addition
to the basic idea of “addressability” (another form of
identity with “spatial” connotations). But the key
social/institutional aspects of identity that Ed highlighted
in his response to your email still don’t get attention they
deserve, in my opinion.
By
the way, my aside “however sameness might be defined”, was
intended to convey the point you made in your fourth
paragraph, perhaps too tersely.
Also,
from my perspective, Ed’s example of the gas station on the
corner persisting as an entity regardless of changes in how
it might be identified was a great restatement of the Entity
Primacy principle I mentioned in my email. His example also
underscores the fact that just about any
attribute/characteristic of some entity can be used as an
identity or identifier, depending on the context in which
the entity is being identified or sought/referenced.
Hans
From:
ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On
Behalf Of William Frank
Sent: Wednesday, October 22, 2014 9:47 AM
To: [ontolog-forum]
Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] "Data/digital Object"
Identities
Cyber
Identity has been at the heart of my job for the last
three years, and identity an interest ever since I
wrote my bachelor's thesis on Leibniz and Master's
thesis on Frege.
I agree
with you, entirely Hans, and would say that implicit in
your language is the essence of the problem: 'identity'
is a kind of a very ghostly abstraction without much
mooring. Identity is surely not an attribute of a
thing. What HAS a mooring is the ACT of
identification As you put it Hans, "assigning an
identity." The act of identification is, as you say, a
social act, and is of course context dependent.
Also, I agree that identification in
cyberspace is what creates the the acute need for better
understanding of identifications.
But, it is
not an entirely new problem, applications and deeper dives
into what is already known might suffice.
For example, Gary's questions: Is a data object in one
format the same as a data object in a different format or
a different one? The bit streams can change but the
original identity might be considered the same." This
applies to *all* human artifacts. When is Moby Dick the
'same' book? However, a new huge confusion has arisen,
the conflating of identifiers with identities.
As Gary says, 'seems like a large claim." Worse than
large, if people think that computers can provide
mathematical certainly about things in the real world, the
assurance that, in effect, a passport MUST be a correct
indentifier, then we are another step along the way to
handing over autocratic authority to the machines.
Instead of 'we do not have a record of your payment'. we
go do 'you did not make the payment.'
I am not
sure how Jack's point about URIs relates, except that
surely, 'to be is to be a URI" is another weird way the
world might be going. For cyber thiings and their
identifying characteristics, I would agree with you,
Jack. But, I also think that identification of *physical*
objects might never or not for a long time be replicatable
with information about the object that can be captured on
a computer.
On Tue, Oct 21, 2014 at 7:22 PM, Jack
Park <jackpark@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
I've
been importing ontologies into a topic map of late.
It's rather surprising how many URIs have been
assigned to the concept with the label "Person".
I
think it is correct to argue that there are many
different ways in which some entity is identified by
different individuals and communities, so it would
seem that any "Architecture" which grows up around
digital objects -- which, by many lights, are proxies
for subjects one way or another-- should be capable of
capturing all knowable ways to identify that object,
regardless of the database identifier assigned to it
locally.
Gary,
I
tend to agree with your musings. The
issue of identity (of whatever entity)
is certainly one that the network
revolution has brought to increased
importance, if for no other reason than
that it exposes the identities that
anyone assigns to an entity/object, be
it digital or “real world” to those who
may assign a different identity to that
same entity/object, however “sameness”
might be defined. The NCOIC Net Centric
Principles grappled with this issue by
means of a principle called “Entity
Primacy”, which basically states that
whatever identity you might assign to an
entity/object, it has other identities
in other, usually collective, frames of
reference. Deal with that, as opposed to
assuming that the identity you assigned
has primacy. Usually that would mean
recognizing that the entity/object has
other identities in other frames of
reference, and one should be prepared to
map the locally assigned identity to one
or more other identities in other frames
of reference, presumably those used by
actors with whom one might want to
exchange information about said
entity/object.
Of
course, one could argue that any
entity/object has some “natural” or
“inherent” identity, such as the PID
referenced below, UUID’s (Universal
Unique Identifiers), or a person’s DNA,
or perhaps more pragmatically, the VIN
of an automobile. But even these assume
a context of some, usually implicit,
scope and an associated frame of
reference. In other words, such an
identity is inherently one of the
collective within which the
entity/object is being identified.
Entity Primacy therefore points out that
no collective context has a priori
primacy for assigning identities to
entities/objects. One needs to specify
which collective context a particular
identity for an entity/object is based
on/derived from. And yes, this is
recursive, since such collective
contexts for assigning identities will
themselves have identities in,
presumably, larger contexts.
Humans
just tend to glom onto some collective
context (such as DNS) and assume that
everyone else will simply use that
collective context for identifying
entities, forgetting that not everything
uses DNS, even in the networking domain.
PIDs would certainly help things – but
they are not universal and they likely
assume some representational context
dimensions, as you surmise in your
email. That’s OK as long as one is
explicit about what those are and
understand the scope limitations that
they imply when interacting with others
who might not share those assumptions.
Hans
From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
On Behalf Of Gary Berg-Cross
Sent: Tuesday, October 21, 2014
5:39 PM
To: [ontolog-forum]
Subject: [ontolog-forum]
"Data/digital Object" Identities
There
is a bit of a movement to
discuss digital data in terms of
Digital Objects and an
"Architecture." One rationale
for this seems to be to provide
an easier mechanism for the
"creation of, and access to,
digital objects as discrete data
structures with unique,
resolvable identifiers" - From
a CNRI’s Press Release.
It
is further argued that such
Digital Objects with a
persistent ID (PID) will
"provide a foundation for
representing and interacting
with information on the
Internet."
Seems
like a large claim and I wonder
what this community thinks of
this idea. After all Identity is
quite a semantic issue and
intuitions about identities for
digital objects might cause some
problems. They seem quite
mutable and we'd need to
distinguish the ID for the raw
data from each processing
version of it. Is a data object
in one format the same as a data
object in a different format or
a different one? The bit
streams can change but the
original identity might be
considered the same.
SOCoP Executive Secretary
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