Identity and Trust - Enabling Layers of the Future Communication Landscapes

The convergent communication may eventually fulfil its great promise: we will be able to move large amount of bits from one place to another at almost no cost, almost instantaneously. However, communication is not about moving bits - it is about building meanings, shared with other people. While the sociology and psychology takes the driver's seat of new, visionary projects related to future communications, we tend to forget that the technology is shaped by the society as much as the society is shaped by the technology, so that thinking in technical terms of social phenomena is as beneficial as thinking in social terms about technical ones. Modern networks essentially follow the same old seven-layer network model. Does it mean that networks of the future will find it obsolete and we all will live in an nondescript cloud of meanings, full of constructs derived from social sciences? As a technologist (with a strong social interest), I believe that layered models are good - if we have layers right. While no model fully reflect the reality, separating the discussion into layers make it eventually quite pragmatic. This talk is about an experiment to structure our understanding of what the future communication is really about, but in a pragmatic form of a multi-layered stack, in expectation that this will allow for the meaningful discussion among people from different backgrounds. Certainly, layers of identity and trust are the main focus as those that are fundamental for all the future communications, as there is no meaningful communication without identity and trust (and there is no identity and trust without communication). Questions of identity and trust resonate very strongly with us, specifically when negative sides are discussed (such as distrust, lack of privacy or identity theft). However, the talk intentionally stays away from emotions, to deliver the vision that is deeply human exactly because it is looking beyond the perspective of individuals, towards the role of identity and trust in future societies, societies that are shaped by and that are shaping future communication landscapes.