Demystifying technology through common language, originally posted on the WAO blog
Here at the co-op we talk about a lot about mental models and metaphors. As we’ve written in the past, metaphors are powerful things, helping people understand complex ideas like how to build Open Recognition programmes. They can shape community culture. They mean people can spend less time understanding a thing and more time working to make that thing better.
We’ve started working with the Digital Credentials Consortium (DCC), an applied research lab working on Verifiable Credentials (VCs). Hosted at MIT with a membership portfolio that currently includes 12 other universities, the DCC is leading the development of technical standards that underpin VCs. They are building demos and betas to help university registrars and IT departments, employers, vendors and developers understand the power of this technology.
When we talk about this work to people who don’t work in technology, we have to lean heavily on real-world metaphors to help people understand the underlying concepts of how technology works. Educators understand marking achievement with a credential much differently to technologists. As both educators and technologists, we need to find ways to explain the new and various worlds that technology opens up for us.
The DCC seeks to empower learners by enabling them to have ownership and control over their digital credentials. As an applied research lab, the DCC can show that the technology works, paving the way for much wider adoption. However, technology alone is never enough. Most people do not care about a technical standard per say, they care about what that standard can do for them. Aas Marshall McLuhan famously pointed out, people tend to understand new things using existing mental models.
In this post, therefore, we want to play with a few examples, metaphors and mental models to help us explain what the DCC does.
Examples of standards
There are a couple ways to understand a ‘standard’.
A standard can be just the usual way of doing something. A standard can also be a reference to make sure things can be understood in the same way, no matter where or what is referencing the standard.
For example a kilogram in France is the same as kilogram in Germany, and a kilogram of feathers weighs the same as a kilogram of bricks. The kilogram is the standard, but where it is applied or what it is used for is up to whoever is using it.
Here’s some examples of standards you’ve probably heard about:
- Metric System: 100 centimetres is a metre and a foot is 12 inches. All our rulers and measuring tapes follow one of these systems, at least in the western industrialised world.
- AM/FM Radio: “Amplitude modulation” or “Frequency modulation”, the way radios work is standardised.
- Timezones, chemical symbols, maritime signal flags — our world has plenty of standards.
A technical standard is similar to these everyday standards, and how we get things such as the entire internet. We have technical standards that allow us to communicate and collaborate on the World Wide Web. However, because people need to understand what they are doing at any given point, we use homely metaphors — such as an envelope to signal ‘email’ (i.e. a digital message sent between servers).
Open technical standards are important when it comes to digital credentials. We don’t want a world in which the digital credentials we’ve earned at University X work differently to those at University Y and aren’t understood by Organisation Z. We need to make sure that our symbols of achievement make sense to whoever is looking at them.
Towards new metaphors for VCs
The DCC is active in helping shape the open technical standard for Verifiable Credentials and building ‘reference implementations’ on top of it. That’s a lot to take in if all you need to know is “Can we use DCC’s openly licensed work?” or “Is this person qualified?”
In technology, standards are a way to ensure that solutions with different tech stacks work together in a way that is described as interoperable. There are common examples of technical standards in action such as:
- Email standard: Did you ever think about how you can send an email to any email address no matter what domain the email is pointing to? (e.g. [email protected] can send an email to [email protected])
- HTTP: You will have noticed the “http://“ or “https://“ in your browser menu bar. The HTTP application layer of the World Wide Web is what’s called a “standard protocol”.
- URLs: Come to think of it “Uniform Resource Locator” are also standardised, which is why you can just type in blog.weareopen.coop and end up reading this post!
The DCC exceeds at promoting interoperability. It creates and maintains open-source tools that facilitate issuing, verifying, and managing digital credentials in different contexts. The DCC contributes to the development of open standards necessary for Verifiable Credentials to gain global acceptance, like email has.
Mental models, metaphors and symbolism
Helping people understand examples of a standard is one thing, finding a metaphor for a specific standard is quite another.
A mental model is the container within which you can include a metaphor. A metaphor is, further, a container within which you can use symbolism and iconography.
If you have the mental model of chatting with your friends, the metaphor of “speech clouds” — this is a metaphor because language is not visible — helps you understand why most chat apps use speech clouds as logos and icons. This symbolism and iconography helps users understand that a piece of software can help them communicate with other people.
These mental shortcuts pop up all across technology — A folder icon to signify a new organising container for a body of work. A telephone to indicate making a call. A camera to designate a photo application.
Most people have a mental model of what “credentials” are, so how can we use other containers to explain Verifiable Credentials? The secret is in the name — “Verifiable” denotes “trust”, but it’s not actual trust. To use a metaphor the DCC often uses, VCs guarantee that what is inside the envelope hasn’t been tampered with, but doesn’t say anything about the letter inside it.
We trust other people’s trust. For example, if someone has a driver’s license, we trust that they know how to drive. It’s not just because they have the license, but rather we trust the agency behind the credential.
Often for trust, safety or verification, we use symbols like padlocks and vaults. For credentials, we often use seals and certification icons. Might using these kinds of iconography help users and implementers understand what is involved with cryptographically-signed credentials such as VCs?
Mental models for VCs
If we abstract away from “credentials” as the mental model, we might find other ways to explain this work. Another mental model that could help people understand what Verifiable Credentials are is the World Wide Web. Anyone can create a webpage, but some webpages are created by people or organisations we trust more than others. For example, when you want to know the weather, you likely go to the webpage of an organisation that employs meteorologists and uses weather prediction models.
Verifiable Credentials could also be thought about as state-issued identity documents. Be it a birth certificate, passport or drivers license, a marriage certificate or a school transcript. Even before the internet, these forms of identity documents are requested and verified by people other than the person who owns them (e.g. Laura’s birth certificate or Laura’s school transcript). These kinds of credentials are more than just the paper the credential is printed on. For example, a school transcript is a ‘product’ which is produced by a ‘school system’ that is predicated on national standards.
There are a variety of organisations that issue identity documents. They are issued in different countries and with different water marks. Somewhere underneath it all though, there are standards and processes, procedures and protocols that make identity documentation for many people* interoperable. No matter who issued your birth certificate, you can use it to verify your identity. The big flaw in this mental model is the fact that ANYONE, not just states or governments or elite organisations, can issue Verifiable Credentials.
The DCC doesn’t just work in standards. They also create infrastructure and lightweight products to help people visualise why these standards matter. This is part of the reason we wish to experiment with different mental models.
*Unfortunately not all people have even this amount of privilege. Indigenous people, refugees and people from certain countries do not always have the ability to verify their own identities. Transitioning to a world in which we use VCs for identity could help.
Finding the right language
We don’t have to choose a single mental model to help us talk about complex ideas. Instead, we can play with multiple models, metaphors and symbols to find things that resonates with the audiences we’re trying to communicate with.
In future posts, we’ll pick apart examples and metaphors for things like infrastructure, products, interoperability, data security, efficiency and any other terms or jargon that will can help people better understand what the Digital Credential Consortium is up to.