Identifiers as a platform

Drummond Reed collects some thoughts leading to (well, he says it best):

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With XRI 2.1 and the XDI RDF model, about which I’ll start blogging much more extensively after IIW, that’s what we’ll have laid the foundation for. A semantic web where the semantics are actually in the identfiers.

Excelllent. XRI or OpenID could be used to identity resources of all kinds without even the need to access those resources beforehand. Whole services could be built on top of identifiers alone.

Prediction: XRI will be as big as RSS

For those of you looking for good podcast and interested in new frontiers on the web, there is an excellent IT Conversations from Phil Windley speaking with Drummond Reed on XRI and Identity.

I’ve been watching the VRM space get some legs for a little while now, and this podcast really gave me some great understanding of the identity space and fueled some pretty neat ideas. I’ve got VRM religion!

I firmly believe that XRI will revolutionize how web apps are built, and even how we eventually view the web. I’m already redesigning the architecture of a few of my projects, in anticipation of the huge change that is before us over the next few years.

Quote me:

I think XRI will be as significant as RSS.

Much more blogging to come on this subject.

=matthew (listen to the podcast if you don’t get this signature)

UPDATE: On a side note, I entered blogging late because the first descriptions (from traditional media) of it explained it as a way for non-technical people to update websites. True, but when I realized it was really about conversations, I saw the light.
Similarly, when identity was poised as “a way to sign on to different sites with the same credentials,” I thought it was neat, but now I realize that is only the tip of the iceberg.
It’s really about redistributing control, to the identity. That’s why VRM and identity mesh so well together.

UPDATE 2: Since this blog is predicated on silos of social interaction melting down from a web page based point of control to an individual or “buddy list” basis for social networks, I now adapt my original thesis which claims, as Stowe Boyd might say, “the buddy list is the center of the universe,” to a new crede; “identity is the center of my universe.”
What I mean to say is that once identity is firmly established, the social network, or what I like to think of as the “adhocracy,” will develop in a distributed manner. What, in cluetrain fashion, will inevitably result is “pure conversation.” And all economics will be subject to that and only that.

UPDATE 3:After re-reading what I just wrote, I think I’ll keep the picture of me with a beard on the blog, despite my wife and Greg Narain’s objections. You just can’t seriously talk about distributed control of economics and conversations without some facial hair.