What is ID3?
We are a loose assembly of entrepreneurs, technologists, attorneys, scientists, hackers, artists, data analysts, educators and activists who see open source software as a powerful vehicle for designing a new generation of transparent, networked enterprises and institutions.
What We Believe
The “social contract” between people and their primary institutions and governments are broken. New mechanisms of governance are needed that work with distributed modes of data sharing, production, and monetization. Gone are the hierarchical controls of static governments as well as the winner take conceits of laissez faire capitalism. In their place, we see new and open platforms for value creation that are transparent, dynamic and self- governing.
These platforms will be economic and social in nature, rapidly subsuming and digitizing may traditional social and economic functions. We are optimists in that we see in the vitality of today’s open source movements – Creative Commons, LAMP, Hadoop, OpenId, Higgins, Locker Project, OpenAuth, Kantara, node.js OIX, Identity Commons, VRM, CONNECT, FunF – evidence of an emerging social and economic order that will be open and data driven.
The principal agents of this new digital, social order will not be machines, but people, eager to interact, trade, and socialize. Yet as the web becomes more social, so too will the protocols of interaction become more social and people directed. As the import of people’s online social relationships grow, so too will their concern over how they are see and are seen. Knowing whom and what to trust will become paramount in building acceptance and use of the next generation of social web services.
Mission
ID3 is committed to the design, testing and support of trusted open platforms for data-driven applications. The platform and applications alike must reliably fulfill a fiduciary commitment to all users. To this end, ID3 is engaged in developing open source authentication, reputation, discovery, payment and market-making services. We are also engaged in building new kinds of digital institutions that are transparent, accountable and self-governing.
Our lives today are swimming in Social Data, those snippets of personal information generated by our phones, cars, cameras, medical devices, Web cookies, and search engines. When combined with data mining analytics, Social Data can be used to make disturbingly accurate predictions about our habits, tastes, friends, finances, health, travels and much else.
Typically all this personal data is collected, mined and monetized by parties we don’t know, and for purposes we can’t imagine. Many people would be surprised to learn that Social Data have become so valuable that companies use them as a formal medium of exchange. They are tools for identifying customers, designing products, crafting marketing. They are important drivers of growth and innovation in most sectors of the economy. It is no exaggeration to say that Social Data have become the oil of the new economy
But how can we allow the use of this data to enhance efficiency, innovation and growth — while preserving data security and our control over personal information?
ID3 was founded to meet this challenge. Data-driven applications are likely to transform virtually all social and economic sectors – finance, government, media, healthcare, education, and beyond. But there remains a major impediment – people’s legitimate concern about how Social Data will be used, or used against them. There is a need for a trusted, transparent means for people to control, exchange and monetize their own data.
While absolute privacy may no longer be a realistic expectation, people do have reasonable expectations of trust – trust in the accuracy and authenticity of data, trust that data will be used and shared only as intended, and trust that data will not be used to “trick and trap” people to betray their best interests.
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