'If only I owned my data: Architecting decentralized data' by Katharine Jarmul, Nimisha Asthagiri

Today, our personal and business data are not in our own hands. They're trapped in silo-ed and proprietary centralized systems. Let's explore an alternative architecture and ecosystem, where industry-wide decentralized data ownership is the prime directive. To appreciate what this future entails, we tour related compositional elements of decentralized identity (user-controlled digital identity), privacy journeys (user-controlled data access), decentralized depositories (user-controlled data storage) and federated machine learning (distributed data analysis at system endpoints). Applied to real-world consumer applications, we examine tradeoffs of product resiliency, user privacy, data portability and durability. We leave you with concrete (open source) tools and emerging standards that you can leverage today, as technology leaders in the industry.

katharine jarmul
Principal Data Scientist & Privacy Activist
@kjam

Katharine Jarmul is a Principal Data Scientist at Thoughtworks Germany focusing on privacy, ethics and security for data science workflows. Previously, she has held numerous roles at large companies and startups in the US and Germany, implementing data processing and machine learning systems with a focus on reliability, testability, privacy and security.

Nimisha Asthagiri
Principal Digital Platform Strategist
@nasthagiri

Nimisha Asthagiri is a Principal Consultant at Thoughtworks, a global technology consultancy that integrates strategy, design and engineering to transform enterprises to modern digital businesses. Prior, she was Chief Architect and Senior Director of Engineering at edX, driving intentional architecture for the next generation of large-scale online learning. She is a long-term technologist who values innovations that result from the amplification of diverse voices and the synergism of collective strength. Her past accomplishments include leading the security of a peer-to-peer group communications platform at Groove Networks.

------ Sponsored by: ------

[saminchowdhury]

It would be amazing if the future looks like this. But I don't think businesses would be incentivised to follow this architecture.

[ittixen]

This is not a problem of technology, this is a problem of capitalism. Giving users control over the tools they use is trivial, but business interests dictate taking away control from the users.

Despite constant tech advancements, somehow devices & services are becoming more restrictive.

Young people today may not even be able to imagine how free tech used to be. As a millennial programmer I witnessed this change in real time.

We pay the price in reduced security, reduced usability, and reduced freedom, in order for corporations to profit by controlling our data and dictating our user experience.

[jjurksztowicz]

Wow, really important presentation. How to incentivize this type of architecture is still an open question, but your point about subpoenas and liability is a good starting point.