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Re: [ontolog-forum] "Data/digital Object" Identities

To: "[ontolog-forum]" <ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, John Bottoms <john@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
From: Pat Hayes <phayes@xxxxxxx>
Date: Thu, 23 Oct 2014 10:46:47 -0500
Message-id: <4CC3A755-D4E2-4F33-B568-8281B469AA0D@xxxxxxx>

On Oct 23, 2014, at 10:43 AM, John Bottoms <john@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:    (01)

> 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 ... sequence of motions is used to create a profile of 
>your responses that can be predictive.    (02)

Isn't that an accurate description of signing your own name?    (03)

Pat Hayes    (04)


> 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. 
>> 
>> Wm
>>  
>>  
>> 
>>  
>> 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.
>> 
>>  
>> On Tue, Oct 21, 2014 at 3:24 PM, Hans Polzer <hpolzer@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> 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.
>> 
>>  
>>  
>> Gary Berg-Cross, Ph.D.  
>> gbergcross@xxxxxxxxx     
>> http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?GaryBergCross
>> NSF INTEROP Project  
>> http://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward.do?AwardNumber=0955816
>> SOCoP Executive Secretary
>> Independent Consultant
>> Potomac, MD
>> 240-426-0770
>>  
>> 
>> 
> 
> 
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