As was mentioned in yesterday’s post on CLOUD’s Dimensions, Who, What, When and Where look different in a world of ME 1.0, as opposed to a world of Web 2.0.  This post looks specifically at one of these four axes, WHERE I Am™, and provides more detail on CLOUD’s thinking on this particular dimension.  To frame our discussions on dimensions, the diagram to the left will become more prevalent in CLOUD’s public facing conversations about its work.  In this case, WHERE I Am is shaded to indicate that for the purposes of this conversation, WHERE is a fixed vector or axis.

As one unpacks the idea of WHERE I Am, there are actually several components acting in concert.  There is, of course, my physical presence, but there is also the dimension of geography. WHERE I Am is actually a combination of two places:  mine and the geographic location I happen to be occupying at any given moment.  With or without ME, the geographic location still exists.  In addition to this physical topology, humanity has also created a globe-spanning built environment of schools, bank, homes and many other structures.

So, when Places asks me to “check in,” it is actually triangulating three components: geography, structures and ME.  In all three cases, this “data” does not belong to Google, Facebook or any other web site.  Just because Google takes a picture of something from the Street doesn’t change the ownership of the structure.  Just because Facebook has uploaded all sorts of business addresses into its databases doesn’t mean the locations magically appeared or that I must manage my location from their website.  WHERE, like WHO, belongs to ME.  So, if the locations are already there, then trying to figure out whether Foursquare, Gowalla or Facebook is the best path to manage my geolocation services seems to be the wrong question.  Regardless of which of these sites I choose to use as my viewer, whatever choices I make about my geolocation should be available across websites.  That is the heart of ME 1.0, as opposed to Web 2.0.  If I start with ME, then the walls of the Web come tumbling down.

As a future posting on another of the CLOUD axes will discuss, WHERE I Am can also be WHO I Am.  For example, let’s suppose Google’s Street View is showing us a school.  Obviously, part of this geographic location relates to the structure, but the school’s “tag cloud” isn’t limited to just where it is.  The school is a sort of “flowpoint.”  It is not just a geographic tag but actually a “nexus” of numerous “threads” flowing through it.  At the same time that students and teachers enter the building, there is another “flow” of data occurring, one related to learning rather than location.  The concept of WHO will be discussed in more detail in an upcoming WHO I Am™ CLOUD Dimensions posting.  The concept is also discussed in the video vignette on our home page, CLOUD and the Power of WHO.

Getting back to WHERE I Am, though, there is one more facet of this concept worth considering.  The physical world and the virtual world are simply not the same.  As discussed in my personal blog, The End of Linearity, there is no “there” on the Internet. Web destinations are not the same as a street address.  A URL is merely a pointer; latitude and longitude are real.  URLs can move and change; locations don’t.  And, in the world of the Internet, I can be everywhere, anywhere and nowhere, all at the same time.  And no matter WHERE I Am, CLOUD’s language will make it about you and the local ownership and use of your data, of which where is but one more axis that makes you, you.

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We’ll also be making several posts over the course of the next few days to discuss Who, What, When and Where and how they look different in a world of ME 1.0, as opposed to a world of Web 2.0.  Who, What, When and Where are not unique.  These four axes are discussed by companies from Apple to Facebook as the core for some of their new products and services.  WHO I Am™, WHAT I Am™, WHEN I Am™ and WHERE I Am™ are unique, and they form the four axes of the future multi-dimensional standard CLOUD is building.  The following picture will help us frame this discussion over the next several posts as we discuss each dimension from a CLOUD point of view:

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Unfortunately, watching Roni Zeigler show off Google Health, it is clear that there is not even a real data utility layer for health.  This is not to say that Google Health is not breaking important new ground, but the idea that I have to import information from the Cleveland Clinic or any other source is what gives me that feeling of deja vu.  For all the prowess of Google, this is just a Web 2.0 version of the old EDI approach to moving information.  Once I click that import button, I now have data in two places, Google Health and the Cleveland Clinic.  Once data is replicated, new challenges develop around which data source is authoritative, and the data runs the risk of being out of sync.

So as not to simply target Google’s approach, it is equally clear that Microsoft has the same perspective.  Their announcement with Siemens is an excellent accomplishment, however, as I just tweeted from @ANewCLOUD and @CLOUDHealth, “Can the PHR be a ‘platform’ like the Internet when Microsoft & Google announce partners/customers? I don’t license the Internet.”

At an intuitive level, a true date utility layer for the Internet can not just exist within one domain.  If it did, it would be like having different flavors of HTML for finance, education, government or health. As we all know, HTML is a presentation layer that like the printing press can print whatever “words” we feed into it.  We don’t have different printing presses for different topics, and so, we can’t have a separate data utility layer for different topics, either.

The ultimate implications of a true data utility layer in health (or any domain) means that any player in the value chain: doctor, payor, patient or any one else, does not need to know if your PHR is in Google Health or Microsoft HealthVault.  Like HTML, I can view a web page in Internet Explorer, Safari, Firefox or Opera, and I do not need to know how the website I am visiting was created.  Until we reach this same point with a data utility layer for the Internet, we will remain trapped in the world of EDI and keep have a strong sense of deja vu.

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With the program commencing at 1pm today, I decided to join my wife on a walk of the Seine this morning and a visit to the Musée d’Orsay.  With a limited time at the Musée d’Orsay, I felt compelled to visit the impressionist and postimpressionist works.  They are my favorites.  As we looked at some Monets, I noticed something very intriguing about each of his works and for that matter all of the painted works in the Orsay’s collection. As important as the works themselves, it was equally important to the artist to put their WHO and WHEN tag on their works.   Monet and others not only signed their names to their art but also indicated the date of their painting.  Of course, Monet’s painting of the Arguenteil Bridge or the Houses of Parliament tells you WHERE it is by the subject matter of his painting.

What does Monet have to do with the Internet, though.  In today’s world of the Internet, we have a new canvas on which to paint our works of art.  Unlike Monet, we do not need to be skilled with a brush, colors and a sense of how to combine them to use the Internet.  We do, however, still use tags like Monet.  When we are on Facebook, we tag WHO we are to connect with our friends.  When we are on Flickr, we tag WHERE we are by sharing photos of our experiences and WHEN they were taken.  This whole notion of WHO I Am™, WHEN I Am™ and WHERE I Am™ is part of our DNA, and CLOUD intends to bring this language for people on the Internet to life.

Of course WHERE I Am matters, and in order to connect with leading European artists in Health 2.0, I have come to Paris.  By being in Paris at the Cité Internationale Universitaire, I can not only see great art from the past but also see the great art of the future.

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Cerf urges standards for cloud computing

In this recent Infoworld article, Vint Cerf, as always, asks the right question. The answer to his question is to return to the basics of the Internet that he created. The “inter-cloud” problem he described most recently at the Churchill Club stems from popular acceptance of HTML 15 years ago. While HTML sparked an Internet boom, it made people look at the Internet as a way to connect Web pages, not people.

Securing user data scattered among large numbers of Web silos is complex and consumes huge amounts of every users’ most valuable resource: time. The solution isn’t another identity standard or method for data portability. It’s a paradigm shift.

CLOUD’s technology standard is that shift. It transcends mere identity to empower Internet users to control precisely how their information is used. Think of it as a privacy and authenticity standard that can work in more ways than HTML for the simple reason that it marks up facts about people, not text. The standard would permit anyone — user or service provider — to develop tools that are simultaneously more sophisticated and easier to use.

Success requires a shift in thinking, a step beyond HTML. A mark-up language for people instead of text — one that supports Internet connections that transcend the browser paradigm that’s consumed us since the 90s — would be a return to the very roots of the Internet created by Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn.

CLOUD believes the keys to adoption are, one, Local Ownership and Use of Data — hence our name. Two: Breaking down health, finance, education, and other silos to simply connect people, not industries. Just as people use one main standard to connect text on the Internet, we should use one standard to connect with each other on the Internet. And three: Empowering people to easily separate their identity from their data at the transaction and relationship levels. Thus, privacy is ensured and the economic value of connections among people and their data grows. ME 1.0, not just Web 2.0.

From the perspective of a rain drop, there is no such thing as a cloud.  By changing perspective, we’ll achieve an “inter-cloud standard.” Starting with the individual, not the cloud, is the first step.

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CLOUD doesn’t take positions on legislation and regulation like “net neutrality,” but it agrees about the power of technology.

The power of the Internet comes from connecting people and democratizing access to content and conversations. Unfortunately, the importance of users isn’t fully considered in pending net neutrality legislation or Federal Communications Commission regulatory proposals. Users simply aren’t seen as potential participants in the ultimate decisions of legislators or regulators.

In any event, using technology like CLOUD’s Context Markup Language (CTML) to empower individuals to find the right balance of price, speed, and capacity for themselves will ultimately make the entire net neutrality debate obsolete.

Net neutrality views of big players “are growing hazier,” Crovitz reports. He notes a Washington Post interview in which Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt said, “It is possible for the government to screw the Internet up big time.”

Indeed. Mistake number one happens when policymakers confuse the Web with the Internet. They are not synonyms. The former tends to connect people with commercial services; the latter tends to connect people with people. It is the individualism of the Internet, not the collectivism of the Web, that will ultimately prevail.

While cloud computing and cloud services are all the rage, the Web paradigm, because it’s the Internet’s most visible feature to both government and business policy makers, leads to short-sighted thinking. The longer the Internet is thought to be merely the wires that deliver services, the longer government and business policy will remain half-baked. The Internet requires new tools to connect people to each other, as well as it connects people to traditional corporate and government Web sites.

Crovitz writes:

The best defense against access providers’ acting unreasonably is more competition. The alternative would treat the modern network of the Web as if it were the 19th-century network of railroads, with the FCC as a modern-day version of the Interstate Commerce Commission, which set rail rules and tariffs, slowing innovation in transportation until the agency was abolished in 1995 as a bureaucratic anachronism.

Bingo! In the first 40 years of Internet freedom and abundance, only the past 15 or so were delivered by HTML and the World Wide Web. CLOUD proposes that the next revolution of the Internet be achieved through a new language for people, not just Web pages.

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Much like HL7 and CDISC have only 15% adoption due to privacy concerns, these topics, payments especially, appear to be the elephants in the room at Health 2.0.

There is lots of innovation at various points in the system from American Well to Practice Fusion to YourNurseIsOn, but all of these exist in the current plane of competition (Innovator’s Prescription, Clayton Christiansen). Without reorienting the system from the user, ME, out, we’ll be putting fancy Internet and Web interfaces on top of the problem but not fix it. A CLOUD-enabled world means to change that plane of competition, so all these innovators have a new standard to work with that actually solves the problem.

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Places of the Soul, by Christopher Day, makes the point that architecture must begin based on where the designed structure is to be placed.  As he notes in the book, studies have shown that there is strong correlation between recovery time at the hospital and patient view, with every leaf being ‘worth its weight in gold.’  Design matters.  The Health 2.0 team has architected an excellent agenda that looks at the design issue of the healthcare system from the perspective of the patient.  I am excited to be attending and look forward to the possibility of CLOUD presenting its new vision and language during the Human Centered Design Contest.

CLOUD believes that the Internet needs a new design, too, an architecture based on starting from a new place, the individual.  ME 1.0 looks forward to meeting Health 2.0 and engaging in a new blueprint for the future!

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Consider this as you watch the FDA’s work in this area: Why limit improving health tools to the Web alone? The Internet’s power to connect people goes far beyond the browser paradigm. Check out CLOUD’s perspective from a higher altitude.

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