[Dave Birch] Well, my paper on “Psychic ID: A blueprint for a modern national identity” has been accepted for the new Springer journal “Identity in the Information Society” (IDIS). I didn’t completely understand the form I filled out, not being familiar with the world of academic journals, but I think the essence of it is that I can put a PDF of my original on my web site provided it contains a link to the actual journal article, so once I can sort that out I will do so. But the main reason for this post is just to note how what started off as an idea in a discussion — basically, trying to visualise 21st-century digital identity management using Dr. Who’s psychic paper as a reference point, having given up on trying to explain keys, certificates and all the rest of the crypto-infrastructure — became a presentation and then a paper and finally a peer-reviewed paper that I’m rather proud of. I’ve found a way to explain to non-technical audiences — well, British non-technical audiences at least — that the combination of widely-available devices and intelligence can deliver an identity management infrastructure that can achieve much more than they imagine.
And to top it all off, after writing about how (since brain interfaces don’t actually exist) we could implement a psychic ID card using the same contactless technology as is used in Oyster cards, I literally fell off my sofa after settling down to watch the Dr. Who Easter special on the BBC last weekend only to see the BBC steal my idea! Yes, Dr. Who got on a London bus using his psychic ID card (see video here), clearly demonstrating that it has an ISO 14443 interface that can fool machinery as well as the psychic interface that can fool people. Art imitating life!
These opinions are my own (I think) and are presented solely in my capacity as an interested member of the general public [posted with ecto]
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