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With the long-planned centralised ID (via pretext of “medical passports”) juggernaut bowling down the road towards us and ushering in a Western version of the Chinese Social Credit Score where your Human Rights, rather than being God-given, become a function of  your obedience to ever-more politician-decided criteria it seems a great occasion to discuss what an alternative might look like. No less than Tim Berners-Lee has an alternate vision with his Solid project – “Solid is a technology for organizing data, applications, and identities on the web.”

Slavin.jpg">Slavin-150x150.jpg" alt="" width="150" height="150">Serial entrepreneur Kirill Slavin is CEO of Reputation Transfer an InsureTech focusing on data portability and extra data points for insurers.

Kirill (who is also CEO of EdTech Academator – busy guy) joins us in this episode to discuss a radically different take on digital identity as well as discuss whether Berners-Lee is right, wrong, too radical or not radical enough.

Topics discussed include:

• the appropriate context of UK PM announcing new restrictions to get himself out of a politically tight spot
• technology creates problems but can also solve problems – how can we use tech to dig us out of the centralised-tyranny hole?
• the origin of the names “Kirill” and “Slavin”
• how Kirill was identity-less for some time pending resolution of his names
• Kirill’s career journey from Moscow State University through finance and management consultancy to serial founding
• the twin tap-roots of identity-centralising forces are regulation but also the power of networks
• “it’s easier to put identities in one place but then Governments and BigTech would like to exploit that for their own purposes”
• Sweden’s trail project to chip people “for their convenience”
• the lack of safety of databases – hacking of all levels of all levels of databases
• people’s desire to control their own data
• how the ratings agencies are “fraying at the edges” due to open-banking
• where this might go
• so far the focus has been more on data than identity – but of course there is no former without the latter as an owner
• why cant one have many pseudonymous identities for many uses cases
• Kirill’s perception that this is still the predominant model outside of FS (&its stronger centralising regulation)
• “my radical concept is ditch the over-arching concept of ID”
• why do we need names? What is identity?
• “nowadays it is possible to prove that user X on Platform A is the same as user Y on Platform B without the concept of universal name”
• the “hub and spoke” model of identity
• surnames as a State-imposed concept re identity back in the day for purposes of taxation and control
• case study of insuring ones car and the DVLA
• Kirill’s optimism about the distributed identity model
• comparison between the (so-called) metaverse and the real world
• the arms race between the State and technologists trying to stay one step ahead (eg VPNs/Tor browser)
• is Tim Berners-Lee right?
• Kirill’s analysis of what TBL gets right, what he does not and what is not ambitious enough
• shoutouts for Reputation Transfer and
• the commonality of both business being very ethical and focusing on using tech for good – in the latter case eg inverting the BigTech platforms who want to steal your attention for their profit

And much much more

Share and enjoy!