It turned out that the Beatles weren’t separated from Yoko after all. But Peter Jackson may have come closer. His film “Get Back” seemed so over the top that even Beatlemaniacs like me had enough. But no. We still can’t stop talking about it in this edition of the gang. Random reviews from every third person on the street relieve Yoko, complain about the poor material and generally agree that they want to see the director’s 15-hour cut anyway. It’s like that Groundhog Day with the four Fabs endlessly repeating the same mistakes that led to the end of the world’s greatest show. It’s easy to believe George Harrison when he later said the Beatles weren’t that good, but where are we?
The portions weren’t big enough. Paul was too bossy. John was checked out. So what. Have you ever read the first draft of the Gettysburg address? I bet this is the first draft.
I think I finally got Twitter Spaces up and running, or at least the record part. Then Jack Dorsey goes and starts massive speculation about the block verse or whatever. What started as a retirement plan for Sergei and Larry (Alphabet) brought the reboot of Facebook to Meta to keep Mort Zuckerberg’s hammerlock on social media. I renamed Marc Mort as part of the new branding. The Beatles did this first with Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. You keep moving in and out of style.
Media speculation suggests that Dorsey is realigning the Twitter stack under Square / Block’s crypto wallet super app. Look, he’s stopping. Look, he’s still there. But significantly, Square has been far more successful than Twitter with the Wall Street crowd, and that impersonation could prove meaningful as Twitter builds its software stack under Dorsey’s successor. It is reminiscent of the old days when XML and the web services stack spawned RSS, blogging, podcasting, and then the cloud in many ways. Today it’s newsletters, live streaming and live conferences à la Clubhouse and Twitter Spaces. Reminding scratches; it is what some are trying to call Web3.
Last week one of the founders of the identity movement, the wonderful Kim Cameron, died. Doc Searls, one of the founders of the longtime Internet Identity Workshop conference, recalled the group emerged from a special edition of the Gillmor Gang on the last day of 2004 and a subsequent face-to-face meeting at Esther Dyson’s PC forum conference. Kim brought a gentle sense of humor, deep knowledge of identity potential mixed with working with open standards, and the benefit of his role at Microsoft. When the Identity Gang morphed into IIW, Kim brought his personal and big tech identities to the table.
Doc and I went to find the Identity Gang show and we got the link to work with the help of Phil Windley and Doug Kaye of IT Conversations. Meanwhile, Doc and I recorded a conversation in the clubhouse room. We’re just beginning the rollout of live recordings, but the tracks have been laid and the conversation is back on track.
Kim designed what he called the Seven Laws of Identity. Then, crucially, he got Microsoft to agree with many of them. “One of his laws was: a multitude of operators,” recalls Doc. “That was huge. And for Microsoft, at that time, they ruled almost the whole world to sign off a multitude of Operators, which Kim made them do. It was a big deal. It was a big deal, even if there wasn’t a formal way to do it. But it was clear.
“He’s won a number of – I wouldn’t call it political battles – but certainly skirmishes within the company to make sure they aren’t trying to do with identity what they would do next as they are with Passport made. It was and still is a very influential cause. It shapes today’s development with the so-called SSI for self-sovereign identity, which is basically exactly what its laws say: minimal disclosure for restricted users and user control and consent. It basically gives you back control over how your identity is used or things about yourself can be identified online. “
Whether individual or corporate identity, the Beatles’ lesson is the bitter struggle to be the greater sum of their parts. These four men in their late twenties had conquered the world by immersing themselves in a collaborative harness that they knew couldn’t last. Harrison openly discussed breaking off to make his own album, but he rationalized it as a way to get back in the hive for more Beatles. McCartney, in a private 1-on-1 with his songwriting partner, told Lennon he was the real boss, Paul the second boss. John pushed back: “Not always.” Paul had none of it. “No always.”
The story seems to live in the cracks between what some people think is the way forward. I’ve always been interested in the creative space that arises from the tension of collaboration. As Keith Teare said at that Gillmor Gang meeting, the appointment of Bret Taylor as Chairman of the Twitter Board of Directors and Co-CEO of Salesforce represents not the bad, but the good side of Silicon Valley, “which is that people feel themselves backing each other up and “taking care of the results of companies they don’t work for. And the best thing about the Valley is that it is incredibly cooperative and issues are discussed openly and fairly transparently and people know each other because it is so small. “
Two of us aren’t going anywhere, John and Paul sang. Unlikely.
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The Gillmor Gang – Frank Radice, Michael Markman, Keith Teare, Denis Pombriant, Brent Leary and Steve Gillmor. Recorded live on Friday, November 19th, 2021.
Produced and directed by Tina Chase Gillmor @tinagillmor
@fradice, @mickeleh, @denispombriant, @kteare, @brentleary, @stevegillmor, @gillmorgang
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