The Future of the First Person Network

• Supply Chain: Logistics & Networks

In today's global economy, there is need for an increased level of co-ordination between the people who work in transport, whether by road, rail, sea or air, and the ever-growing number of business's and individuals they are representing. When a given agency or enterprise is used for the service, there may be hundreds of people who will handle their packages before they are finally received. Having the right team at the right place, at the right time is truly a matter of discipline, but just as valuable are the records that a team compiles; where his or her level of proficiency in supply-chain management can directly affect most everyone's bottom line. What we have to offer is a means to track each of the team members through an interaction between networks. Just as the packages are tracked with barcodes and RFID, personnel can be also tracked, and a certain correlation may be made between both sets of numbers -- permitting a higher level of efficiency and better relationships.

What a First Person Network will give the Transportation Company is the new capacity to know the exact location of each person in a team is at any given moment, and who amongst them is moving the package along in the supply-chain. There is a type of identification here that can offer opportunities for a different kind of audit where who handled what, where and when can be benefiting the customers as well as the enterprise handling their supply-chain needs. Ultimately, there is a new category here that offers a higher level of interactivity between the personnel. What is more, the accumulation of data can lead to improvements in competence and streamlining, with a great deal added to transparency in the operations. What all of this means for a company is an incredibly flexible database for person to person and station to station services within the supply chain.

• Security: Asset & Safety Checks

With a variety of practical applications for safety and security the First Person Network will be offering the enterprise or organization a tangible system that is individualized for each one of its users. What makes it tangible is the physical part of the interface. Due to the constant contact that one will have with their footware, the product of the interaction is defining a new template for ID authentication. This is done when digital uploads from the footware are regularly analyzed by software, the non-physical part of the interface, in the user's handheld. The end result is a wholly different view of biometrics in the individual's gait, a view where short-travel plans are more important than 'pass' or 'fail'.

Despite the fact of individualized footware, and the unique stride characteristics that each of us have, there is a quite useful consistency to the traces being left behind whenever someone is moving in the vicinity of a registered door, machine, computer ... or any other thing that is in-the-larger-network. It could be a gate that will need to be physically secured, or a computer network that will need strong logical security; with the persistence of the First Person Network there is now an interface that can be readily accessed. So long as an individual keeps their shoes on, and their handheld has seen use in the original approval process, then traces of their movements can be archived, tracking them place-to-place by what was accessed last. Actually from first-to-last -- wherever their gait biometric had been used, a unique trace of their passing is always left, persistent enough for an audit. Whatever is locked or unlocked, opened or copied, changed or left as-is, by a registered person, the actions involved can be comprehensively logged; all the data, date & time recorded.

Identity management will of course include the general and detailed reporting capability, but in order to achieve a superior level of security and safety, while respecting the individual member who, after all, volunteered their biometric, there are further control needs. Once a person is inside an area, gone through the secured perimeter, they continue to own their biometric; but why they do not exercise their right to remove it from a given database is based on their evaluations, both pro & con. Losing their registration, for one, is loss of access (which could be total), and immediately showing up on-screen at security is another con. On the pro side is the argument for autonomy, which in this case means quitting a job and taking access to their gait biometric with them. But if a new day should find them re-employed, their re-registration would re-activate their file. With all of the traces from their on-the-job movements being owned by the enterprise, the individual cannot be taking their-exact-measures off-property, but for general lengths and whatnot, for their own records, they own the rights to them.

Due to the high profile of security in today's world, we have placed this singular capability for a First Person Network in "initial apps", where we will focus during product development. At the present time there are two articles written: one is on physical access, "Controlling Access with a Wireless Biometric", and the other is on logical access, "Network Security via Gait Biometrics".

Coupled with security interests are the safety features brought about by this system. For instance, when the operation of heavy-duty equipment is considered, both the physical layout of the plant they are in and grounds they are on, as well as the proximity of other individuals to them, are important things to know before the machines can be safely used. This remains true even when the facts of the various relationships are not in a database. But when they are in one, certain connections between personnel, layout and machines will be realized -- and the very history of their linkage can be audited in real-time. What will start with a higher level of operational safety for one team in a given area can only improve when the whole of a workforce is in footware. With footware in the equation, the adoption of protocols to determine acceptable conditions for machine operation is quite doable; who is using a machine will depend on how this person is registered and other qualifications. And if other workers are dangerously close, that too can factor in. Safety has the same level of importance as Security.

• Services: Teams & Operations

In this area of development, we begin to explore how the First Person Network will be adding to identification management by bringing in tracking services. In the above notes and applications this is only hinted at, the one article coming right out with it being "The Emergence of a Local Positioning System" in the "technology" section under "A First Person Network and the creation of e-Patterns". Identifiers and links that have an address are mentioned in "How ID is achieved" in the same section. With new facilities and resources -- made possible by an investment strategy or sales in "initial apps" -- we can focus on Tracking, and all that is implied by it. Greater efficiencies will be due to knowing where your personnel are at all times, and what they have done at certain times. In the complex relationship of enterprise partners, suppliers and customers there is always a great need for transparency in the whole area of data processing and each time a new level is reached it has only enhanced communications between the various inter-connected parties. Job to job, from one business to another, the identified individual may be tracked. When this level of capability is added to the above application areas there are even more possibilities.

• Societal: People & Networks

In the future it is possible that the First Person Network technology will have been embraced by more than just teams or large groups. The influence may be far-reaching, affecting life-style and more. Now with the footware alone, it seems reasonable to expect a certain level of market penetration due to the adapting nature of the new shoe ("reasonable" because superior technology is not a guarantee, as any review of the technology field's history can show). But an analog shoe is one thing, a digital shoe is another, and secondary uses will only be adopted if the individual is both recognized and respected.

The footware technology has out-and-out potential, at both the analog and digital levels, and it may be tipping the scales in our favor. When recognition is the focus, as seen in the ID articles noted above, there is a potential for people to control their ID outside of the enterprise. The business model for the online database has had notable success of late: from MSN to Yahoo, MySpace to eBay, Amazon to Google. These are examples where the-database has real monetary value. If the individual's digital ID will work for the enterprise, there is good reason to expect it to work at the person-populated database level, possibly with a multitude of services. What is significant is how strong the new form of ID can be and how many remembered-passwords and sign-up procedures will be replaced.

When the individual is the consumer of online services, it is their rights that should dominate, and at the top of this list is the right of withdrawal: it is basic to a partnership that you can take much of what you brought with you away should things go awry. Within their-connection to the footware they will use, as read-online by way of their handheld or computer, there is a process that will authenticate their ID, once a certain acceptance level has been reached. This can take many forms; one of which can be with an anonymous account, with PayPal for instance, where said account was created by a transfer of money (which itself has always been anonymous). In another take, the services of a 3rd party can be obtained: they would operate a basic database that included the bonafides for both the online service and the user. At many of the online sites that one can sign-up for and in particular the Social Networking sites, the anonymity behind the profile of a user can be just as important (and needing of protection) as their autonomy is. How someone's footware will better handle their online identities is due to their nearly infinite number. The point for an authenticated digital ID is understood when its strength is validated by singling out the-one amongst many (1:m in the language of biometrics), not in its particular and specific nature. So long as one individual is pointed to, they can make use of as many IDs as it feels comfortable to. Even the person who is masked continues on with an identity of sorts, no break in their step will need to be shown.

What is coming from the new interpretation of someone's gait is a biometric clip, wherein a short passage of time is framing the assembled template. In-each-case of chosen identity is seen a packet of data, and it is this packet that is recognized when a given network has accessed the stream of information that someone walking will produce. The persistence of this information is producing data for the handheld or computer that is acquiring it, which means the supply comes from the thousands of positions taken when someone moves, stands or even sits. With both the stream and assigned-packet recognizable, the registration on the site is secured. But for most sites it is only the packet that is needed, the major portion of the electronic stream will mostly be found useful in the high security areas. Considering the context these are likely to be physical-sites for a major portion, though logical security is gaining an ever-higher profile. When a real person is reducible to a scanned pattern -- it is only positive if the individual can cancel it.

Whatever the ID might have permitted would simply be gone, but this is truly balanced by the on-site privileges that one might lose. When cooperation is understood, the respective parties have good reason to respect the rights that each have. Procedures can be simple for both parties, either of them can confirm access, or deny it, by a simple check box on a Permissions list; one version in the user's handheld and one on-site, part of the database the enterprise will use. The compliance issues are handled and the whole handshake process is facilitated at the highest level. A First Person Network is creating a kind of connectivity where each user will have several new choices to make -- choices not yet available because the footware are not yet made. Even to what degree that the individual is identified and whether or not they use anonymity, and more, the decisions they make can affect their relationships. With a significant number of digital identities, the individual can be filtering their e-mail with aplomb; they will not even come close to running out. The more that people attach an ID to what they send, the more advantages they will see in doing so. For spam and the other critters that irritate our online life, or threaten it, their death is coming.

With the addition of tracking, which will start and perhaps end with the self-tracking, there are several opportunities for a Social Network to serve their users, and it can go beyond what is offered by a new digital identity. What has begun with the gait biometric will go on expanding with the power of patterns. Just as templates are made from data patterns, so to are the new levels that reveal how far and just where one has traveled in the time spent with footware. There is an intimate and exact connection between our micro-actions and the space that we are taking up. As the individual moves about their immediate area, they can have a new kind of return on this investment (as it might be called). It comes through an exploration of the many patterns that develop, paying attention to those that are relevant to the between-areas (and much more than this is IP, as in Intellectual Property). A simple pattern is all it takes for an ID. With all the rest of them, especially the regular ones, the point-to-point directions can be realized. Put it together with the exact measure between steps and you can have tracking. Tracking that can be leaving a history and more. At such a level this First Person Network is more than reading the steps that someone is taking, it is now writing to a database uniquely owned by the footware user. With a nod to the size of their handheld, only a fragment of it is right-there, but we have more latitude when the larger portion is accessed through IP (as in Internet Protocol). A number of apps, by various developers, can be using this self-made (and self-referencing) data.

The notes, comments and articles in this section will explore the concepts behind this type of service, with consideration for what is needed when deploying the tools for it. Explorations will cover how the footware can help in hospital care for one. Paging is not good enough when a doctor or nurse may be too busy at something. If a caller could see who was available or just where a person was, they could respond appropriately; the usual business of waiting-for-someone is not appropriate in this setting. When an area is filled with smoke, it is the firefighter who could really use the location information; it can be crucial to know the whereabouts of another on the same job. In another situation is the parent with a need to know the whereabouts of the child; out-of-sight is not at all out-of-mind. Likely though, the majority of users will be coming from the business teams and the friendships in the population at large. At any given moment a person might be given permission to view where their buddy is, and visa versa. A First Person Network creates a level of connectivity where packets of tracked-up information will give a person telling advantages. The age we are living in is truly explored with information -- and more is better.