Vision

Digital Identity has suddenly become a major theme in commercial software, but digital identity means more than just providing a convenient vehicle for delivering our credit card data. We recognize that our ability to express our identity as Citizens of the Planet offers the potential to empower us, both to see ourselves as part of a larger whole, and to share our interests and affinities, as well as skills and projects, with those who have complimentary offerings and needs.

A group of visionary independent software developers, start-up companies, technical and social networks and interested individuals have come together to form the Planetwork Consortium. We intend to bring together software tools which will promote greater interoperability across social networks on the Internet, and thereby create conditions to empower a broad based progressive phenomenon. We are also raising funds to support the integration and implementation of key software infrastructure. But perhaps most importantly, we are initiating a public dialog around a new meme - software in service of the planet.

We believe that the shared need of humanity in the face of accelerating global crisis represents the most compelling orienting principal of our time. This will become more compelling than even the idea of open source by itself and has the potential to bring developers and users together in a truly dynamic and meaningful process to build the adaptive tools we need. By articulating a shared purpose which is different from the commercial market we may define a commons that many companies will be able to make contributions to without detracting from their commercial interests. Indeed, by establishing a larger user base many may actually advance their market position by participating. However, as it stands, up to now, there are a number of core social network functions which have not been percieved as a sufficiently compelling market to be developed by the private sector alone and some of these may represent the core enabling infrastructure needed for a massively distributed social network to emerge.

We operate in a transparent collaborative manner to facilitate greater integration of software for noncommercial use among parties aligned with the ecological sustainability and social justice values articulated in the Earth Charter. This effort will assist in the development of key software tools necessary to catalyze the rapid evolution of global social purpose inter-networking. These tools range from cutting edge social networking software, to incredible 3D geographical visualization and mapping on the desktop, to state-of-the-art graphical display tools which allow the representation of networks and other conceptual information in visually compelling spatial metaphors. The value of these efforts in relation to each other will be much greater than the sum of the parts, as each will increasingly serve as a component for others in a synergistic whole.

Yet, all of this rests on creating conditions whereby a vast number of individuals and organizations can choose to describe themselves, their interests and affinities, projects, skills and needs electronically.

Identitiy

Individuals interested in designating themselves as Planetary Citizens also take control of their online identity through the same registration process. This will be accomplished by means of an interactive online system hosted by participating nonprofit organizations, or NGO's, aligned with the Earth Charter. The process will give individuals a way to endorse the Earth Charter, while also allowing each person to create their own user maintained and controlled self-description, or digital identity. As this is envisioned, individuals may then grant organizations and institutions, with which they choose to be associated, permission to link to, or copy, appropriate portions of their identity information.

One benefit to participating institutions will be reduced data acquisition and database maintenance costs, as each user is far more likely to maintain their own single primary identity record carefully, and far more likely to both disclose more and value that representation of themselves more, knowing that they retain control of who can use it, for what purposes, and in what manner.

According to this vision, only the public portions of these records will be available to be crawled on an anonymous basis, and only the aggregate demographic data, without connection to individual identity, will also be available for all to see, thus providing a mirror showing not only how many individuals endorse the Earth Charter, but other more detailed portraits as well. This will ultimately provide the capability for users to see an infinite variety of aggregated preferences, interests and affinities.

The first level of the network must be explicitly noncommercial - a civic space where citizens describe their social purpose interests, activities and concerns. Just the ability to see how many of us there are, and who shares these overall interests and goals could be tremendously empowering and politically transformative.

For many, the primary objective of the large scale network is creating alternative economic structures capable of changing the whole financial and commercial system. So, an additional opt-in network for commerce and finance with explicit ecological and social justice filters is one of the most compelling potential outcomes of an emergent global social purpose network. Indeed, Annette Riggs, founder and first president of Barter.com, has a specific proposal to take advantage of some existing online trading technology which has the potential to empower a whole new "geometric" exchange system allowing a vast number of parties to immediately complete transactions with each other without using currency.

updated: October 14, 2002 - 2:50 pm PDT