AttentionTrust
The idea of taking ownership of your data is squarely in the sights of AttentionTrust, the brainchild of among others Steve Gillmor and Seth Goldstein (President and Chairperson).
AttentionTrust is “a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting the basic rights of attention owners.” That means everyone! The particulars of what this means (the “rights” from the AttentionTrust home page) can be mapped pretty much directly to the kinds of things I’ve been talking about here:
- Property: you OWN and CONTROL your attention (and, I’d argue, all your other personal data)
- Mobility: you can TRANSFER your attention (implying that this data is separate from the apps that use it — see microformats)
- Economy: you get something in return if you TRADE your attention (or, I’d argue, allow others to collect it)
- Transparency: you can see how your attention is being used (and, I’d argue, when it’s being collected)
Wow! Attention even has its own microformat: attention.xml, also spearheaded by Steve along with a bunch of folks from Technorati. Needless to say, I joined right up:
I guess a big chunk of this blog has ended up being concerned with a generalization of the AttentionTrust idea: that you should “own” all your data, from your attention to your preferences to your identity to your social network. This ownership should then imply all the “rights” listed above.
Kudos to everyone involved with AttentionTrust! More from Steve, Seth, Ed Batista, and of course the indispensible TechCrunch.