Tell me about your vision. So my vision is really
a reprise of what we had in social media in the
80s. A lot of people don't realize that social
media goes back to the 1980s and, in fact, goes
back to the 1970s. But back then we had something
called accountable anonymity. You were not tracked.
You didn't have to disclose. your identity and
yet you were accountable so um i launched the
world's first online encyclopedia in 1981 that
turned out to be a horrible business model but
it fairly quickly morphed into social media 1982
it became the delphi social network and in delphi
You know, you had up to six usernames that you
could use for yourself or for family members.
You could use them for different personas. And
no one had to know your identity unless you did
something wrong, unless you, say, defrauded someone
online. stole from them, or if you defamed them,
in other words, you told untruth things about
another person, if they got a court order, we
would disclose their identity to you, the injured
person. Also, if you broke the law. So we would
occasionally get a visit from the US Drug Enforcement
Agency saying that we think this user has been
dealing drugs online and and we'd like to know
who they are and we'd say um well did you bring
a court order and and they'd say well we're the
the drug enforcement agency do we need a court
order and we'd say yes you need a court order
so they'd go get a court order and and we would
disclose the identity of the person so that's
accountable anonymity You are accountable and
accountability is something that I started writing
a book. In fact, there it is, the second edition
of Quiet Enjoyment right behind me. I started
writing a book about bringing accountable anonymity
or bringing accountability back to social media,
web -based social media, because of course there
was no... There was no World Wide Web in the
1980s. It was all text -based. And as I was writing
this book, I was contacted by some people at
the International Telecommunication Union who
said, hey, we understand you're writing a book
about bringing accountability to social media.
We're actually building. a global PKI network
that implements the things that you're advocating
in your book, Let's Get Together. We did and
I worked with them for a few years and it turned
out that the member states of the ITU weren't
so enthusiastic about it and so they pulled the
plug on the World eTrust initiative basically.
So the Leadership of the World You Trust initiative
came to me and said, Wes, could you continue
this work? We can't keep doing it. Our mandate
is to stop. But, you know, and I said, yes, I'd
like to do that. So that's March 7th, 2005 is
when this online municipality, the city of Osmeo,
was born as a source of duly constituted public
authority for the online world, for the social
media world. So that's the vision, you know,
eliminating fraud and malware and phishing attacks
and ransomware and breaches through the application
of accountable anonymity. Tell me more about
that. How does that entail with what you do now?
How does that entail with media in play? Well,
media meaning online media or media meaning all
media. It's strictly an online phenomenon. It's
based on PKI. Now, if you're familiar with Well,
with what we call AC, HTTPS is an application
of AC, asymmetric cryptography. So right now
you and I are connected via an SSL tunnel, SSL
and TLS, right? Yeah. So that makes use of this
fundamental technology. That technology was invented
way back in the 70s by the same British Signals
Intelligence Agency, where decades earlier, Alan
Turing had shortened World War II by cracking
the German Enigma codes. In the early 80s, well,
in the 70s, it was a British military secret,
so he couldn't talk about it, but it was sort
of reinvented in the US without the knowledge
of the original work in the UK. And it was, pieces
were filled in to make asymmetric cryptography
practical and to deliver the kind of. accountability
that we're talking about. The framework basically
goes from asymmetric cryptography to public key
cryptography to public PKI, public key infrastructure.
It's a very mature, very proven, very sound,
robust. system for a while it was difficult to
implement for a number of reasons one being that
computers didn't have the power needed to do
the cryptography but that's all changed like
we all have a super computer in our pocket now
so that's that's been taken care of but another
thing happened and that is that um the big tech
companies So doing PKI right puts you in control
of the use of information about yourself. Well,
when, you know, a collection of industries we
call syllabandia makes all their money by basically
stealing your personal information and selling
it through information brokers and using it to
manipulate your perceptions. That's a trillion
dollar industry. When you add up Silicon Valley,
plus the broadband industry, plus the media industry,
plus the dark web and the botnet farmers, and
we include private equities, venture capital,
and the cybersecurity industry in that. So that's
a big bunch of industries, and it adds up to
over a trillion dollars worth of revenue. What
would happen to that trillion -dollar set of
industries if all of a sudden you and I and everyone
had control of the use of information about ourselves
and only people that we licensed that information
to could actually use it? And the answer is that
would be the end of a trillion -dollar industry.
So that's why PKI never got the traction. that
people needed to gain real security, real privacy,
and real accountability. So we're bringing that
back now that more people, now that people in
general are more sophisticated about what Silicon
Valley is doing with their personal information.
We think there's a market now for people who
are willing to invest a little bit of time and
effort into... bring themselves to a space that
delivers real privacy, real security, real accountability.
That is accountable anonymity. So how do you...
Because I know our data is tracked in almost
everything we do now. One of the things is because
we carry our phones everywhere. Anytime I'm going
on Amazon, looking through some stuff, they're
tracking how much time I spend on each item.
What did I search? When did I search? What time
of the day? Same as social media. They're tracking,
hey, I was at this picture, at this like, at
this moment. I switched it out. We eliminate
that. How do you eliminate that? Through what
we call. a certificate stack. Okay, so you know
how personas work, right? You have multiple personas.
Imagine that if you drive around town, you're
in a small town and people recognize your car,
right? They know where you're going. People take
note of what you do and where you go. So you
go out and buy 40 cars and you drive around town
in 40 different cars. Now, all of a sudden, it's
much more difficult to track you, right? And
that's through, you know, the physical, that's
in a physical environment. Online. We can emulate
something from that physical world, and that
is your car's number plate. Now, think about
it. Anyone can see your number plate, but no
one gets to know the identity of the driver or
owner of the car unless there's been an incident.
And this is important because you can't, you
know, there are. A lot of people out there who
think that the solution to this trackability
is to eliminate governance, eliminate authority,
and let there be no consequences for anything.
Well, that doesn't work either, right? If you
emulate your car's license plate, In social media,
in the online world. And furthermore, you create,
and I say license plate, number plate, I've got
to get used to using one or the other. But picture
those 40 cars with 40 different number plates.
Now that, in the physical world, that gets pretty
costly to have 40 different cars. But in the
online world, you can have 140 cars. You can
have as many personas as you want. And you present
yourself in different communities as different
people. But they're all tied to a foundational
certificate. It's like your birth certificate.
People don't see your birth certificate. They
don't see your foundational certificate. Physical
world, how often do you use your birth certificate?
Pretty infrequently, right? You don't carry it
around with you and use it. For identity, you
have your driver's license, your passport, or
your school ID, your employer ID. So that's how
it works. You make yourself accountable, but
you don't give away anything about yourself,
your location, your identity, your name, anything.
a lot of these platforms that are actually tracking
us right um are now requiring id verification
right to to to make sure that you are the person
you say you are and that could be to verify it
could be for information on could be either or
to to eliminate bots and other other things um
How does someone get over that with KPI? First
of all, we're not accepting that as the way to
do things. I guess that's the best answer. Just
because people are doing things the wrong way
doesn't mean that it won't be replaced. One of
my favorite sayings is that tomorrow will always
be different from today. um you know everything
that we people people have a a way of assuming
that the latest technology is the permanent technology
well it never is it's not that it often gets
uh succeeded by something else it always gets
succeeded by something else so whatever you're
looking at now that means of authentication you
know i'm Here I am saying, here's how we're going
to replace that. But whether we replace it or
not, someone's going to replace it. Now, you're
probably familiar with Passkey. Yes. Okay. So
Passkey is one way to bring a level of consistency
from one relying party to another. But of course,
that also introduces immense trackability, as
though we didn't already. have enough trackability
where, as you said, everything we do is being
tracked. And now this just, you know, reinforces
that view of the way Silicon Valley, plus the
broadband and media industries, plus all the
others track you. We're getting rid of that.
Now, the thing is, it's not, there's another
assumption. And that is that when you change
the way things work online, You're changing them
everywhere. Because the Internet works like a
highway system, right? It was called an information
highway. And so if you're changing the way the
highway works, you know, if you're going to all
of a sudden say, you know, instead of red is
stop and green is go, we're going to say purple
is go or something like that. You've got to change
everything everywhere. That's not the assumption
that we have going forward. You choose to be
part of our online world. It's not imposed upon
you. So we have a number of enterprises in the
works. Think of us as a... as a franchising type
of business. We have a platform and our franchisees
use that platform, the authenticity platform.
And one that is about to be introduced, you know,
I'll tip my hand a little bit here and say that
one of our franchisees, an independent company,
is going to be launching a dating network, a
dating app, where everyone... If you join this
dating app, naturally, as with the Internet,
you don't have to be part of it. But when you
do join this dating app, you know that anybody
you encounter is a real person. No fake people,
no synthetic identities, and that everyone is
accountable for what they say and do online.
So no more pig butchering scams. No more, you
know. fraud and and um all the bad stuff that
comes with a lot of dating sites now that's an
example of the way this is deployed so your this
is how what i understand from what you said so
your system is not designed to replace what's
in place because i mean there's a lot of reasons
because but one of the reasons could be It's,
I'm guessing, extremely hard to replace the way
data is used and being manipulated and sold on
the Internet today. But your network specifically,
someone has to choose to be a part of to protect
their information. So you're familiar with that
old metaphor, right? The information highway.
It's easily understood. when you think about
that expression. So what is a highway? In the
physical world, how do we use highways? Typically,
we use highways to go from building to building,
right? Yeah. You and I are both inside of buildings
now. These are spaces of accountability. You
tend to know who's in a room with you. Where
you're sitting and where I'm sitting are not
part of the highway. They're separate from the
highway. You use the highway to get to them.
So that's the way this works. The internet, we've
tried for years to keep our files, have our meetings,
let our kids hang out by the side of the highway
when we should have been saying, wait a minute,
this isn't the way highways work. Highways take
us to bounded spaces of accountability. Right.
You leave the highway and go into a building.
Well, think of what we're doing as providing
the tools by which you can build buildings that
you reach by the highway, but are not part of
the highway. Thank you for being here today.
I'm really happy that you tuned in to Vision
Pros Live. I'm looking forward to seeing your
reactions as these episodes continue to move
forward. This is going to get more and more fun.
We'll have more and more engagement as well.
We'll invite people to participate in the show.
And thank you for giving us your time and attention.
Have an excellent time building out your vision
and becoming a vision pro yourself.