Thoughts on total openness of information

Total information openness. No private information.

Can you imagine living life without having any private information? No private bank statements, no private files on your computer, etc. So I understand this is a pretty large leap from the world we are currently living in. Fair enough. So why would you even ask such questions?

Ok. Let’s take a slightly different path. Do you trust the government? Do you trust the large banks? Do you trust Facebook? Do you trust Google? All these entities currently hold some of your private information. These entities have all proven to be fallible. So, given that these entities are fallible, are there other options? Don’t pay taxes and keep your money under the bed is one.

What if all your private information was public? Just the information, not the control. This means your bank statements are public but not the bank password for transfering funds. Is it possible that your information is better off in the hands of the general public than it is in the hands of these large fallible institutions? If everyone has your information, does that make it less prone to theft? Do enough people care to make it repair itself, the way wikipedia repairs itself? Does society function better if we actually know the truth about each other?

How could you do this? What are the small steps one could take to build up to total openness? What would be the name for such an experiment? I think one minute per day is a small step in this direction.

So, any of your data that you consider to be “yours” and not shared with another person. This is the information you attempt to place into the public domain. You don’t do this by picking and choosing, you do it by including all the boring details.

So who can use your information to do wrong? If all the bad people have your info, will you have your identity stolen? But if everyone already knows your info, how can it be “stolen”?

The Big Assumption: Enough people are interesting in seeing your experiment succeed that the positive effects outweigh the negative effects.

Of course you need a catchy name if you’re going to do this thing. What is that catchy name? Some sort of acronym?

TOI – total open information (toi toi toi is something like ‘good luck/break a leg’ in dutch)

NPI – no private information

API – all public information

PIT – Public Information Trust.

TIP – Trust information public

to be continued…

update:

http://daytum.com

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122852285532784401.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/08/AR2008090802681.html

http://twitter.com/keytweeter