How do you connect to Interactive Spaces?

In 2008, 2009 and 2010 I started working on concepts to project personal data-clouds into a space. In the old setup you would register to some centralized service and insert all links to all your social profiles (Flickr, Twitter, Facebook, Slideshare and so on) you would find relevant.

By grouping specific links under different types of profiles you could then grant permission to specific Interactive Spaces, allowing them access to only one specific profile, keeping – for instance – business and private data separated.

Why and what?

We “are” our public data. We share, we create and we try to be things like interesting, likeable and cute online for the people we want to be friends with. So it is quite logical to assume we want to present these profiles in the physical spaces we are, when we are with other people at some time. Think of tables that project data. Think of meetings in which we run through direct links to information you collected and shaped into presentations.

To not be able to project your personal data-cloud in a space and on systems right now seems logical, but I think will be considered just as “normal” over 10 years as leaving your house right now without your mobile. Not being able to project your personal data over other systems will become a gap, a lack, something of the past.

Stupid. Simple

Only last week I realized that creating a centralized service and (more specifically) centralized access management might be the most stupid idea ever. Not for the question if people would register, but more because there is a simpler way to deal with this.

You see, to create a centralized service with specific profiles brings a lot of additional complexity. The main question is:

1. How do you grant an Interactive space access to only a specific profile? You need to somehow grant that space access to your Cloud and then to that specific profile

Push, not pull

Instead of pulling a profile from a centralized location (I realized) it would be much easier, but also much safer, to simply keep all these profiles localized on your mobile. When you enter an Interactive Space and when your mobile connects to it, you can simply select one or more profiles stored in the app on your mobile and send the associated links to the Server of that Interactive Space.

Ad hoc and in constant control

The main benefit of this approach to the previously concoctions is that you can decide on the spot what links you will share to the Interactive Space and that you are in constant control over what links will be shared.

What remains: privacy

The remaining gap in this construction is the question of privacy.

I touched this subject in slides  on: “The Post Privacy Era”.

Hardware and software to collect data becomes more and more affordable. To get your IME number of your phone, or the MAC address of the WiFi hardware of your phones and tablets becomes more and more easy. To do face recognition on phones and local camera-systems and match them with online data is already technically possible and implemented in stores and a matter of time before it will hit some kind of mainstream.

To know who you want to be…

To have your profiles is to know who you want to be and to know who you want to be is to know how I get inside of you and sell you whatever I have to offer. This can be from products to religion to get you into my car and do something bad to you later on.

I can also retrieve where you live, what your earning power is, what kind of hardware you carry and if you are a welcome target to rob you or to get your money in some kind of scheme. It is enough material for a story, which I will probably write in this series I started in 2009 and hope to finish for publication this year (2012).

Posted in: Uncategorized