At the moment in the US, the medical community is the merchant. Or at least most medical personnel are bound by the healthcare finance regime unless they have access to a wealthy enough clientele to bypass insurance. Yesterday in Lévis, Quebec, we visited a small house museum Maison Alphonse-Dejardins who invented a mutual aid based credit union, first in Canada. It was successful but apparently not without constant worry of imminent failure and would not succeed without the sponsorship of the Catholic Church. It seems like a similar thing. That which has funding and/or regulatory and/or platform preference succeeds. Without sponsorship it fails. I live in a world where every merchant wants you to download their app while every merchant is already running on Amazon or MS databases. I can fill my phone with dozens of apps and make $ for Apple and Google, or I can just buy it all from Amazon (or Walmart or Target). Sam Altman thinks this will all go away and we’ll just ask ChatGPT for what we need. That’s what Alexa and Siri and Google Assistant (and probably Metaverse) were supposed to be. But it didn’t work out that way. Because we still want choice. And we need merchants, manufacturers, bankers and internet to fulfill these choices. We want to compare prices. We want our preferred brands. We want to decide for ourselves. We need a way to preserve our autonomy, anonymously or not, and our choice. And we don’t want to live in a bland sameness. (At least those of us who are no longer teenagers). Noreen
On Apr 16, 2025, at 1:59 PM, Tom Jones <thomasclinganjones@gmail.com> wrote:
Reality exists solely in the eye of the beholder. Both the visionary and the madman can see wonderful buildings rising to the sky. The US, Europe and other communities can see a future with humans enabled by mobile technology. In my view I see my choice controlling my destiny. The start-up in the US sees wonderful opportunities to build a company. The European bureaucrat sees Brussels dictating opportunities for state level control of our choices. The dictatorial regime sees state level control of their populations. None of these views will be fully realized as the reality will be guided by these 4 among many other visions. I didn't even list the existing companies that each have visions incompatible with all the others.
Is it possible that each person can pick their own solution? The dictators don't think that is wise. The merchants and access control gateways can only accommodate a few options. But it is these gateways that will be the ones to determine the user's choices. The only gateway I see involved today is the US TSA for airport access. The other obvious one is the customs control point which is pretty happy with the passport solution. What's the next obvious control point, the medical community or the merchant? Perhaps if we focus on those two we will have a chance at a good solution for all.
Peace ..tom jones _______________________________________________ A Community Group mailing list of KantaraInitiative.org WG-RIUP mailing list -- wg-riup@kantarainitiative.org To unsubscribe send an email to staff@kantarainitiative.org List archives -- https://mailman.kantarainitiative.org/hyperkitty/list/wg-riup@kantarainitiat... ______ Group wiki -- https://kantara.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/WG-RIUP