Future is Federation

Good post on Federation (of which globalization is the chief enabler) by Tom Barnett

The basic lesson I learned with my Packers is the same one cited here: "Technology has given individuals, microcultures and larger groups the means to survive."

The homogenizing/particularizing dichotomy of globalization on culture is not dissimilar to the impacts found in politics: the breaking down of fake states into constituent parts while simultaneously encouraging regional integration.

To me, this is the quintessential structure dynamic of globalization: more freedom below while more integration above. People faint over the notion of a world state, but that misreads the trends completely. We are headed for more forms of federation, not unification. Rather than have some global ID stamped on your forehead, Orwell-style, you're far more likely to have multiple passports.

Of course that future is already here, we now need to distribute the Claims based security protocols to support it, as described in the Laws of Identity

The use of the word claim is therefore more appropriate in a distributed and federated environment than alternate words such as “assertion,” which means “a confident and forceful statement of fact or belief.” (OED) In evolving from a closed domain model to an open, federated model, the situation is transformed into one where the party making an assertion and the party evaluating it may have a complex and even ambivalent relationship.

The world is already federated, its the computer that need to catch up, specifically the security protocols. CBAC gets us out of the world of point to point security and into a world where the security protocols reflect the assets which are composed of diverse resources. You can look at the evolution of security protocols on the web (oauth) and enterprise (SAML) that deliver on exactly this need.

Comments

[Slonob]

We are not in an Orwellian world, we're in a Huxleyan one as described in Brave New World. 1984 imagined a world where you were only allowed what someone else decided you should want and need. Brave New World imagined a world where you were given everything you wanted and more than you needed. Of course either choice meant slavery and tyranny. Everyone lives to serve the state.

Privacy must be sacrificed to make the future better.

Our challenge is to build a safer way for people to buy their soma while actually empowering the user. In the future I want to live in, I will be able to choose my identity provider or providers. Some will go with Google for the free smart phone. I'll choose a more trustworthy provider.

Going further, I want to be the one who grants permission for one entity to trade my data with another. This is the path to freedom. Allow people to live on the Savage Reservation if they so choose.