Footwear as an Information Tool

What sets the foundation for all of our company’s digital applications is the development of footwear as an information tool, a tool that is always generating movement and dynamic data via your gait. Not only will this shoe system persistently produce information from your gait, it will be a product that acts as an interface between you and your immediate environment; examples being rocky terrain, stairs, edges, slopes, your entire ground and more, in other words, your whole ambient terrain.

There have been previous inroads in the the idea of a shoe transferring gait information; notable among them the Nike + ipod insert that delivers running and aerobic info. Others have followed, but no technology aligns its vision with our own: the idea of a shoe that delivers gait and movement information at multiple levels. Our system’s potential applications can be used to solve real technological and usability problems in everything from pure and applied research to health care and biometrics.

When a shoe can be seen as an integral part of a digital system, relaying information that can be used for analysis, identity and location, there is then a deep connection between the human and digital worlds that they are interacting with. This new level of association will allow for multiple uses of the new footware as an information tool. I’d like to note that our footware will allow for energy harvesting as well, which means all of the shoe’s digital expressions have the potential to be self-powered.

Technorati Tags:identity management, security, biometrics, identity, Gait analysis, Technology, Information Tool, Footwear, Interface Technology

Why is ID not automated?

First, let me begin by defining the parameters in which I mean automating ID. The context for this observation is the Internet, and the lack of automation simply is the amount of sign-on’s we must go through to access any account on-line (social, financial, business or otherwise). Everything in the ID world requires a multi step process. The verification procedure is exactly that: process after process, accessing this database to move to another. We are even instructed to fill out our ‘memory cue’ or ‘where were you born?’ question and answer. There is a high rate of non-repeat users of these systems, based on the difficulty in using them.

The fundamental problem with not having automation is the human experience attached to the complexity of enrollment and continuous sign-on’s. OpenID has made inroads but still suffers from a lot of growing pains (a phishing attack is an example of this vulnerability).

There are many ways to look at user-centric identity but really it has to be based on the person, and in some form of an automated way. Biometrics, in all forms, has been pursued to develop a more robust identity system, but still has fallen short. There needs to be a ubiquitous user-centric identity system whereby automation is inherent in its design. This would allow for greater usage and above all, a system that actually works.

I’m not pretending to have the answer but at Plantiga we are researching and developing a system that has, innate in its design, automation. Not only will it be automated but mobile. Whether or not we reach our goal in the ways we have envisioned, we have used the concept of automating ID as an over-arching vision for where ID needs to go.

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identity management, security, IDM, biometrics, identity, Technology, OpenID

Is gait recognizable and can it be a viable biometric?

In many of my conversations with investors, researchers, journalists and even fellow biometric technology developers, I have often been asked whether or not the human gait is identifiable and if there might be an algorithm that once generated can give us a transferable pattern that’s useful.

The short answer is Yes. The obvious comes from the simple experience that many of us have had, of recognizing a friend or family member at a distance, where all you see in their silhouette. The amount of academic research that backs this up is immense. R&D bodies around the world are conducting gait pattern recognition research under the name of HID, or Human ID at a Distance and much is being published.

The University of Southampton and Georgia Tech have entire labs (many with post doctorates and others helping out) dedicated to this field of study. Other professionals are conducting research at Notre Dame and University of South Florida, under the heading of Computer Science.

The point I’m trying to make is that an individual’s gait is recognizable, but so far the data is only coming from objective, camera based snapshots, where the body’s image is primarily turned into a silhouette, with a pre-designed algorithm being used to mark the identity. It’s the future of this science that is most interesting, but for the moment I’ll not go into our technology.

So again, gait is identifiable, but it runs into problems with all the variables like clothing, walking malfunctions and more. And the biggest problem of all is that “HID” is funded by those interested in the surreptitious use of gait recognition. How about all of the reasons that we’d voluntarily give others our data? So long as we know just how much of it is given up and that we can disable the access?

At Plantiga, we are reviewing and internalizing the existing research in the design of our own gait biometric system. The foundation we depend on is consistently working with ongoing data generated from within our internally structured footwear.

Gait is an ultimate biometric because even when standing still, it can constantly be captured. One can’t quite walk around the airport or government office with a fingerprint scanner attached to their thumb, or an iris checker suctioned to their face. Gait, if you can capture it properly, could be the ultimate biometric in that it would be mobile (as in on the person) and persistent (as in always generating data).

Technorati Tags:
security, biometrics, identity, Gait analysis, Technology

Foolproof Security: Is it Possible?

I tend to believe there is a failure when it comes to understanding how a security plan will work; with the current framework, there is nothing that is 100% foolproof. You will not find or create the ’sealed box’ where a breaching of the system is impossible. This is true at both the theoretical and philosophical levels, and it’s also true at the matter-of-fact real world levels.

At the theoretical level, most any securitized installation can be undermined, with any number of variables the culprit. For instance, any system requires human involvement, and since humans are dynamic individuals with agency of many sorts, one cannot guard from human malfunction at some level. This can be transferred over to real world problems, where current security networks and identity management systems are consistently being breached due to the human involvement.

Philosophically, the ’sealed box’ metaphor builds a culture of fear, because as freethinking human beings we usually understand that, once you begin securing one aspect of life, you must keep the ball rolling, metaphorically speaking. In other words, security brings insecurity. Instinctually, we comprehend that networks upon networks must be built to achieve any success with a security installation, at both the digital and physical levels. Thus a culture of fear is built, which ultimately is bad for business.

There should be protocols in place, where measured risk and real-life examples are more than just considered, but are internalized instead, created and recreated in a calculated way, all of it dependent on the given systems. Added to this, the human element in the security system has to be limited, controlled and user-centric. In other words, some of the protocols and technology should be working covertly so as to mitigate the risks that are brought on by human variability. Ultimately I’m pointing to our company’s technology platform, as I do feel it will solve most all of these issues. Imagine a security system where the interface between an individual and the networks they deal with is always at work beneath the surfaces, where a clear connection is lying between the human/analog and digital networks they are involved with.

The Singularity is Past

Most everyone in our line of work is (or at least should be) familiar with the book “The Singularity Is Near” by Ray Kurzweil, a 652-page tomb with the body of it ending at page 490, the rest containing Appendix and Notes. His focus, so it seems at first, is the equation of a human-scale Successful relationship when working with machines. This is reflected in the numerous charts and graphs that are showing this “knee” where the rate of change is a likely surprise for the majority of us — because we, in our species-form, are not quite free of seeing things beyond what is incremental — what is successive, what follows one thing after another.

We might reflect on our early days inn the African veldt. Our emerging mind being so caught-up in what’s coming at us next that it had little time to develop a long range view — what is really a necessity for organization — self-organizing included. It is a sad fact that people, the majority, will only see the future when and if Someone-else, a particular leader with a certain bent being the usual pick, has both Seen the-future and Approved. So long as there is a recognized vision for a mind-set that will cover most of the eventualities, most will be OK with any program the leader will come up with. For each member of a chosen group will then have their job to do.

Even with the author’s TED appearance; there was an abundance of graphs and charts showing us the exponential growth of things. In no way do we mean to criticize this approach, especially since the conviction and persuasive levels were so highly felt when catching what he delivered! But we are thinking that there is something more to this growth business, and perhaps it isn’t enough to focus our attention on defining the coming changes by seeing the progress through what has gone before. But it should also be noted that the rest of his book makes it clear where many of the possibilities lie.

Most all of his graphs are showing the logarithmic scale, many of the time-lines so depicted covering many, many years. It seems though that the scale itself has little of the ’sticky’ about it. Why else do we all look back with such surprise when seeing where the huge multiples are leading us to? whatever the progression might be. There is a lot of 20/20 hindsight with this view, which is not a bad thing in and of itself, but with an exposition that will use insights at this level there is often a need for a recognized for authority; it is not something that prepares a person to understand the coming changes. We can evaluate charts and diagrams, which we have to do if only for a picture that is useful for the grown-ups show & tell, but there’s not enough for a firm handle on catching where we might take things, not enough for us to be sharing with another person, meme wise.

An early quote from the book…

From my perspective, the Singularity has many faces. It represents the nearly vertical phase of exponential growth that occurs when the rate is so extreme that technology appears to be expanding at infinite speed. Of course, from a mathematical perspective, there is no discontinuity, no rupture, and the growth rates remain finite, although extraordinarily large. But from our currently limited framework, this imminent event appears to be an acute and abrupt break in the continuity of progress. I emphasize the word “currently” because one of the salient implications of the Singularity will be a change on the nature of our ability to understand. We will become vastly smarter as we merge with our technology.

From Division comes Something to Count

An argument can be made for more than one Singualrity, the first one being a-person, a life. There is a consciousness that will stand up in a given environment. I am alive … Whatever happens next is all due to him or her (and me and you) being here, living here, living now. It can be made more complex … but so what? From our youth onwards, we will all devise things, from creations to rationales, to whatever else works; but a-life itself remains the basis for all other understandings (and the reference is to conscious life, life with an “I” in how its identity is made real, made a “Self”, never a worm-shaped life or other such form!). We include the whole of the created universe in the realized existence. We all need our ground to stand on, and being thankful for all of it is right up there, at the edge of consciousness for every individual.

Now the second Singularity, it might be argued (and just for the fun of it), is an individual’s relationship with any one of their tools. Anything, anything at all that is used for a purpose is an extension of the body and nervous system, and thus it can be called a tool that will have an interface, in the modern sense. It should not be that difficult to define — and trace what is left behind through time and artifacts — the tracks from their passage through a life. Many of these may be a part of the historical record (which itself is usually parsed, from the ‘history’ of a days journey to the nature of a process, the steps, of getting through a plan or a recipe), or simply stuck to the machine/interface itself. Whatever connections we make, each of them will be tied in some way to how we go about facilitating things, with each of us unique, whether successful or not in our attempts to achieve something. When carrying a process to completion there is a story here and it might be made visible. It might be seen clearly enough to note a projection, a direction and future tracks. Predictable in other words.

It is not just things with moving parts that are ending up making-a-machine; automation is more of an additional complexity, not the definition. How we reach and grasp, and all of the other actions we engage, in this oh so very real world, are mostly aided and strengthened by the choices we make … when defining our tool-sets. And these are machines in the greater sense of the term. Within our grasp are some new tool/machines; what used to be just ‘our footwear’ will soon enough have an interface. And it is just such an interface, considering the way it will mediate and differentiate between our biological selves and our digital connections, that will tie and link us, in our individual ways, to others. Whatever we might do on a network, or the Internet, is joined by what our person does — one moment after another.

May we suggest a slight change to Kurzweil’s book title; “The Third Singularity Is Near”?

Links:
The book has a website, and so too does the author with his many interests. All of this material is pretty important. (I don’t quite ‘get’ the cover for the book. We can see it “improved” with an Asimov inspired robot that is standin in a forest glade smelling a rose, a Pterodactyl flying by.)

Another book, “Technology Matters: Questions To Live With” by David E. Nye is a good book that puts the whole of technology In Context. Reading it right along with the Singularity is a pleasure.

And “Cool Tools” by Kevin Kelly has a lot of great stuff when it comes to these matters. See his “The Technium” for another fine-way to view things about tools.

Is there a darker side of Identity Management?

A conversation with Mark MacAuley a couple of weeks back has been on my mind (Quin) ever since. Throughout our conversation he provided pointed insights about the problems that have plagued identity management installations over the past five or so years. This got me thinking: Why have these deployments left a lot of the corporate world with a bad taste in their mouth? What happened, and what continues to happen?

It is all the more interesting for our company, because as a start-up developing an identity platform, depending on who I’m discussing our company with, when I use the IDM verbatim, I either get a cold shoulder coupled with a bad experience story or an enthusiastic response. Again, what happened? As a company, we feel that we missed some drama at school that happened in Grade 9, and now we are in Grade 12. In all seriousness, how as IDM come to represent a headache? One obvious answer would be the amount and scope of work involved, but I think it goes deeper than that.

Personally, as a new entry in the identity field, I believe IDM is really about processes, and working from a grounds up approach; one needs to take the knowledge of the company’s work flow systems and embed that understanding in the implementation of the identity management system. Now, this insight I have to attribute to Mark, but what I took from this is the idea of customization. Identity is different for different situations, and a deep understanding of environment sensitive issues has to be established before any system or network can be built upon.

Technorati Tags:
identity management, security, IDM, biometrics, identity

Trump versus Toyota & Google

We do wonder how seriously a certain Decision Matrix on “The Apprentice” TV show should be taken. It’s not the weekly firing of a promising executive that is questioned here. All TV shows need a suspension of disbelief, just as any other fictional form, and in any case if a boss behaved like this for real his or her business partners would go apeshit. We are also quite positive that Donald Trump does not act out like this in actual reality.

But when we compare his stated approach with those of a couple of other business’s, a pair of successful ones lately seen in the news, there is wobble in the firmament.

Who Do We Think We Know?

On the one side, the sourced items before us include a recent “Business Week” with Trump representing the cover story, his mouth X’ed out; the memory of his daughter talking with Letterman on “Late Night”, a few nights back, where Ivana recaps an evening where she caught herself listening to her dad interviewed on TV, him adding “…like a dog” to the question of whether she or her brother would be fired if either screwed up; and finally the episode where this one contestant was reminded, reminded more than once, that she had placed the wrong phone number in a brochure.

There was plenty of good humor expressed in the above examples — except the last one. In the nature of the TV show the misplaced digits became an egregious offense, the value proposition null and void, the possibility for Apprenticeship all shot to hell. The whole of the situation can make you wonder if presentation is all entertainment.

On the other side, the sourced items are a recent “New York Times Magazine” cover article “How Toyota Conquered The Car World”, Feb 18th -07; a “Report on Business” article from the Globe & Mail for April 25th -07 (with its own website now), where “Toyota tops GM in global sales” was the headline; and a 20 minute video from a TED conference, where Creativity is noted for its freedom & necessity, because it is more and more missing in our day to day lives, especially when it comes to how people will act in their business.

The magazine article on Toyota is thorough and highly recommended but it’s a quote from the newspaper that’s worth mentioning: According to John Paul MacDuffie of the Wharton School of Business, “They’re not perfect and what we’ve all learned about Toyota is that part of what they’re really good at its dealing with problems and setbacks and turning them into an opportunity to learn and improve. That may be the most powerful capability of all.”

Where’s The Heat?

It’s not as if powerful people are concerned with our expression or its viewpoint. But it is worth mentioning that most everything on the public stage comes down to this or that decision, that it’s all about seeing an opportunity and taking it. Of equal import are the everyday decisions that everyone makes, where, even though “no one else is the wiser’, an individual is their own-self aware if there’s quality in what is considered, whether or not they acknowledge it within themselves.

A wrong-decision will fall into this or that category, though each of us hopes that it’s excusable. For certain, the big picture will always include failings … and whether or not the public defines it as ‘determining’ is likely a slippery slope. A Decision Matrix has to be seen for what it is and what anyone does with it is their own business. It is tough luck though when a few Taste-makers have the political, legal or social power that magically seems to limit how expressive an individual can be when they are simply going about their business.

In an article for “The Economist”, “The rise and fall of corporate R&D”, this was written (concerning Google):

The company employs very small teams to work on a small number of ideas, some of which may turn into big hits. Failure is an essential part of the process. “The way you say this is: ‘Please fail very quickly—so that you can try again’,” says Mr Schmidt.

We should not lose social responsibility for entertainment’s sake. Private matters, “You’re Fired”, that are made public are for a fact crossing the line. So much of the news now is getting “behind the scenes”, and a lot of what is free for the processing is often gathered is such a way that the seen is in the personality of the person who represents a particular ’sound bite’. Thoughts and feelings are merged, creating for the reader or viewer a kind of mental-soup that is aimed for consumption.

Have not certain “Reality Shows” become news items? We have to remark on the differences between a real business and a fake one, at least to ourselves. If we do not? We can find ourself looking around for applause or frowns when something ‘cute’ happens in real life. And what if the thing happening has consequences, where then does someone go? Who do you see next to find what is now lost?

Links:
For the Mr. Schmidt quote…
For the Creativity vid…

Take a moment to visit several of the videos here. This is only one of the many that are worthwhile.

A Top Resource for Recorded Security Breaches

Every once in awhile you come across an amazing resource. This time we stumbled upon one that is a good reminder of the pain that security breaches cause. Each post is backed up with a link to the original media source. The shear number of breaches, considering this year alone, are enough to scare you off the grid.

Note the resources at the top of this source. Each are well worth a visit. With so many losses in the field of ID and other information, as listed here, we can see a clear path between current ID platforms and the need for a more fool-proof identity management system.

Link:

Errata: Entities That Have Suffered Large Personal Data Incidents

Why are there no billion $ biometric companies?

When you look at the whole of this industry, with its multiplicity of hardware and software developers, manufacturers and vendors, their is a trend, a visible curve in the business cycle, that has produced a lot of small and medium sized companies. As the industry is growing exponentially, it is perplexing why there are no billion dollar biometric security companies. The question, one might assume, is not that simple; there are too many variables. There are at least three over-arching problems that are preventing the biometric industry from producing a billion dollar company:

No Customers! Despite exponential growth in many a biometric market, most contracts and deployments are centered on governments and their agencies. It makes for a limited customer base with a raft of problems, most of which can be attributed to technological difficulties and the cost of beta deployments. Regardless of the continual adjustments, replacements and training that emanates from the vendors, the chances for growth are limited so long as the needs of the corporate world are not heeded. If the system becomes based on persistence and mobility, such as what we are proposing (shameless plug here), there is only then a real potential for sustainable growth.

Hit and Miss! With the current state of most all biometric technologies, there is a whole lot of false-negatives and false-positives that are coming up all the time. This is, in reality, a simplified form of double-speak with a scientific bent. It points to the number of people who either fail to make it past a check-point or in fact do so, albeit without the enrollment in a database that gives them the privilege to do so. What happens when a client becomes aware of the shear numbers that are involved is often enough to drive them away. The strategy considerations and plans to implement a large installation go out the door. Instead the ad hoc and default systems and schemes, what are holding in-place the ‘how’ of an enterprise’s physical and logical accountability scenario, are kept. What size of business can afford such losses?

Where’s The Difference? Most companies are offering products that narrowly differ from those of other company’s products and services. This produces a fragmentation that again limits growth potential. A truly global biometric player must provide a level of persistence in their identity management system that it will work on many levels, with many types and styles of database procedures. When an advancement like this is made, and the biometrically enabled physical and logical access control has become a true norm for security systems, only then a billion dollar biometric company will emerge.

In essence, the biometric firms and vendors that will take a dynamic approach to the identifying behaviors of the personnel/consumer are the only firms that can solve the pain of interacting with security devices and procedures. This will be true for a broad range of markets, not just a few of them. Any security company that indeed provides in their range of products and services the ability to audit and track personnel movements within the grounds of an enterprise will have limitless potential. Whether government or corporate, the biometric industry must overcome these major customer bases being deterred by things like buildings, yards or machines, or if the area in question is a complex affair like a port (whether air, land or seaport). Then, and only then, will one or more security firms grow large, beyond what is now possible.

The Challenge of Attaching ID to a cell

One the greatest challenges facing the growth of the cell phone industry is how to attach true identification and authenticating protocols to the interface. Privacy and security concerns are creating large drawbacks for turning a cell into an electronic wallet or a universal key-chain. As phones are beginning to carry a great deal of information concerning their owners, there must be technologies and systems in place that will ensure its legitimate use.

There are a few biometric and security software technologies that are being pursued and installed in the various handhelds, ranging from facial geometry as scanned by the phone’s camera to biometric enabled fingerprint scanners that are embedded in the phone. Market success rates are varied at best, with consistent reports of failure and negative experiences (phones will turn off after three false negatives, or it won’t turn on in the first place, etc).

If cells are going to grow into the multipurpose tool that everyone envisions, then new and less invasive technologies must be employed. There needs to be more effort in figuring out ways that the handheld/human interface can be reconciled, without taking away from any one feature. And if possible they should even be adding to what the cell is promising to bring us.

Right now the idea seems to somehow make the cell inoperable if someone other than the owner has a hold of it. One of the attempts we’ve read on is how a certain website in England will send a loud howl to the cell if you report one missing. And there’s always some sort of password in the works, aimed to prevent someone getting the data you have stored in it. We’re pretty sure there’s plenty more in the works that are taking this sort of protection in all sorts of directions.

Things will change when the cell can share an interface with its owner, electronically attaching their digital ID to their cell. With ID alone, without considering all the services that might be developed, there will then be a level of informed attachment that allows the cell to work only if and when you and it are near each other. If your cell can be controlled through contacts with your new biometric footware (which is the first product that we at Plantiga are developing), a digital ID is invoked. It will not only make the cell useless when away from yourself, but it can also be set to ring when you’ve stepped beyond a certain distance from it, or when someone has carried it beyond this same set distance. A ‘tethered’ cell would not be too much of an exaggeration.