New section on environmental impacts #27
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| the human species is highly desireable. Examples of related work where | ||
| decentralized technologies have been utilized to prevent use of minerals | ||
| sourced from conflict zones may be found in the following reports from | ||
| <a href="https://sustainability.google/progress/projects/traceability/">Google</a> |
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@csuwildcat @selfissued does Microsoft have any similar initiatives for ION?
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| sourced from conflict zones may be found in the following reports from | ||
| <a href="https://sustainability.google/progress/projects/traceability/">Google</a> | ||
| and | ||
| <a href="https://www.apple.com/supplier-responsibility/pdf/Apple-Conflict-Minerals-Report.pdf">Apple</a>. |
Co-authored-by: Charles E. Lehner <[email protected]>
Co-authored-by: Charles E. Lehner <[email protected]>
Co-authored-by: Charles E. Lehner <[email protected]>
Co-authored-by: Charles E. Lehner <[email protected]>
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@mprorock we might want to consider referencing https://www.w3.org/2001/tag/doc/ethical-web-principles/ directly. cc @peacekeeper thanks for the suggestion. |
Excellent suggestion. References added |
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I'm taking time off for Labor Day, and would ask that this not be merged until more of the community (including me) has an opportunity to suggest changes and submit content. It's important to give this time, because a hasty inclusion of something that lends credence to a fundamentally false narrative backed by spurious arguments and dubious claims could harm the community, implementers, and, by extension, the use of systems that are designed to deliver maximum protection of digital human rights. |
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@csuwildcat Completely agree. This is definitely something that we will want to make sure is cleanly included, and also emphasizes the strengths of DIDs in enabling further protection of human rights and other concerns that have broad ethical impacts. edit to note: I believe that clarifying the goals, technology, and actual capabilities enabled via DIDs should hopefully make clear that the authors and actors in the DID space are acting with GOOD intention and that we wish to continue down that path. Some concerns I have seen raised around DIDs makes it clear that individuals that have not been engaged with or closely tracking the work progress might have missed some of the nuance of a reasonably complex set of capabilities, or have missed the fact that much of the motivation of the community is to promote positive and ethical use of technology. As well stated by @csuwildcat a foremost consideration in design and use of DIDs for almost every party I have engaged with in the space is to promote "the use of systems that are designed to deliver maximum protection for digital human rights." Further many of us have leveraged the tech to bridge not just protection of digital human rights, but to aid in the prevention of real world human rights abuses such as forced labor, etc. |
Co-authored-by: Ted Thibodeau Jr <[email protected]>
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Perhaps out of scope for this PR, but if mention is being made to the Ethical web principles, it may be good to also emphasize the principles that DIDs strongly support, specifically:
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| As noted in the <a href="https://www.w3.org/2001/tag/doc/ethical-web-principles/#principles">Principles</a> | ||
| section of the Ethical Web Principles, there are certain key goals that should | ||
| apply to all Web standards and technologies. DIDs explicitly support several | ||
| of these goals, especially the following: | ||
| <ul> | ||
| <li><a href="https://www.w3.org/2001/tag/doc/ethical-web-principles/#privacy">Privacy</a></li> | ||
| <li><a href="https://www.w3.org/2001/tag/doc/ethical-web-principles/#control">Individual Control</a></li> | ||
| <li><a href="https://www.w3.org/2001/tag/doc/ethical-web-principles/#multi">Device Independence</a></li> | ||
| </ul> |
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emphasize the principles that DIDs strongly support
@brentzundel agree - attempted to do that with this section, but i think there are improvements that could be made to wording
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| <h3>Energy Usage and Environmental Impacts</h3> | ||
| <p> | ||
| When implementing or utilizing a DID method, consideration should be given | ||
| to the environmental impacts of any underlying technologies. For example |
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I support the guidance that one should give consideration to the environmental impacts of any system you build. However, that example is inappropriate as it does not meet any standard of objective review. Rather, it is a political an ideological attack on PoW systems, an attack which is inappropriate for the W3C and this working group to make.
In the same manner, we could demand that people consider the ethical implications of Proof of Stake algorithms which clearly reinforce existing power dynamics leading to a runaway cascade in which the larger, vested players establish an unassailable and therefore, undemocratic authority.
IMO, neither of these are appropriate positions for the W3C and the DID WG to take, precisely because it is not a technical recommendation but a political one.
If some part of the W3C were to develop standards for evaluating the environment impact of technologies, and were willing to apply that standard across the board to all existing and propose technologies, I would welcome that objective, fair framework for discussion.
This is not that.
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In the same manner, we could demand that people consider the ethical implications of Proof of Stake algorithms which clearly reinforce existing power dynamics leading to a runaway cascade in which the larger, vested players establish an unassailable and therefore, undemocratic authority.
Good call out. Will make some adjustments
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@csuwildcat that would be great. I have adjusted the PR to avoid calling out particular approaches (as obviously these can change over time). Might be optimal if we call out that similar to making assessments on energy usage and comparing those against other benefits of an approach, we should absolutely make assessments related to potential privacy and security over time and that human rights concerns should outweigh others.
…may be contested or have potential offsets on other concerns such as privacy and control of DIDs
In the right direction, although I think it still reads as an attack on PoW by any name. I think the general strategy should be to communicate that there are any number of criteria that both implementers and users should consider. See the rubric for more details. I'm not convinced that language that is specifically designed to target a particular class of blockchains with armchair economic arguments will be able to achieve consensus, largely because for many of us in this community, PoW is the only solution that actually solves the centralization problem with a truly peer-to-peer solution. I appreciate that others have different opinions about whether or not PoW is innately evil and prefer other approaches. But I won't support the DID WG taking a position on the PoS v PoW v something else debate. This is the whole point of the rubric. I believe our best position wrt politically or ideologically charged differences between methods is to offer good questions--those that highlight the differences--rather than amplifying answers from any particular contingent. |
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I have raised a separate PR (#34) to settle #27 (comment) (and another minor issue). Cc @TallTed |
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@iherman (/cc @OR13 @mprorock @dlongley @burnburn) -- That's helpful information, though it highlights some problematic aspects of the current setup. If I understand correctly, we no longer have a proper Editor's Draft of the ImpGuide. That means that we must get each PR perfect-for-NOTE-publication, regardless of complexity, and we cannot usefully iterate improvements through nor blend multiple PRs (where all must be merged for some/any to be accepted). Probably the best solution (which may not be workable right now for this doc, but would be good to set up for future work!) would be an |
That is correct. The WG has decided, early on, to use this workflow for all its documents, the implementation guide is no exception. I let the chief editors comment on the general approach. |
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@TallTed I think the practical effect is that we should simply expect to leave things as PRs a bit longer than we might otherwise and that the published notes need a bit more polish than editor's drafts. (Noting also that we have a lot of cleanup pending on the Rubric to align it with the recent decision to make it a registry.) |
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@jandrieu you requested changes 6 days ago. Have the recent changes addressed your concerns? |
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@jandrieu can you please re-review this PR? |
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This pull request is currently in a medium-low quality state, in part becuse it references other work that hasn't been done. I recommend that it keep waiting. |
@OR13 What about this answer #27 (comment) didn't work for you? |
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| <p class="issue"> | ||
| Some members of the working group feel it important that the [[DID-RUBRIC]] | ||
| include environmental considerations as discussed in <a | ||
| href="https://github.com/w3c/did-rubric/pull/51">this pull request</a> in |
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This remains unresolved. IMO, a published W3C doc should not point a pull request.
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@jandrieu Would it be acceptable if the link to the PR was removed? |
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@mprorock consider removing the link to the PR, not sure how to move this PR forward. |
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@jandrieu please review again. |
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@rxgrant do you have any change requests with the PR as is? |
That would seem to be reason to open an issue on the Rubric... |
Open PR for almost 30days now.... |
It is often helpful to provide a link with/in statements like this... Also, Issues on the Rubric sub-project seem more appropriate right now than PRs against its text, given that the Rubric is transforming to a Registry, and most text, before or after such PRs, isn't likely to be retained as-is. |
absolutely, apologies as I was on mobile. Link to PR is here (that adds the section to even add any environmental criteria) Issue related on rubric noting that there is no section to add these criteria, and that the prior PR to add at least some criteria was closed |
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@jandrieu can you review this PR again? |
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After a very lengthy review process, we have reached consensus on this PR. I am merging since its been open for 7 days without objection. |
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