Ok.. Authentication.. then what?
not the ones that reads your fingerprint etc.. we are talking about a much bigger market of Authentication!
Let me start by asking few questions first
1) How many % of your time were you spending being connected to another human being using technology in 1980’s?
2)How many % of your time are you spending being connected to another human being using technology now?
Ok.. now extrapolate that chart into future!
What do you see?
Yup! Everyone is going to be connected to everyone else all the time!!!
So what does this mean?
It means, human race is connecting itself! (about bloody time I say!..) It means more interaction! More interaction that will result in more Transactions! More transactions cannot take place unless there is Authentication!
Its a simple formula:
More connectivity –>More Transactions –>Bigger Need for Authentication
Imagine a physical world where we have No Authentication technologies.. in this world, i could give you a piece of paper
and say, here is a $20 bill and you have no means to dispute what I say! What would happen to our Economy then? Chaos I guess! This is very much where Internet is today…
By the way: This is how $20 bill looks like 🙂
It serves you content (Internet is a Big Content Serving Engine) but this content has no authentication built in, so you can’t dispute its legitimacy, whether its real or fake, you just have to take it! Just like me giving you a piece of paper saying its $20 bill and you just have to take it! Doesn’t sound right does it!.. Well reality is this is Internet today! its the Internet with no Authentication layer! It has a search engine layer called Google (sorry Yahoo, MSN..I love you guys all 🙂 ) but it has NO AUTHENTICATION LAYER. This very Layer that we call Authentication Layer is what I am trying to weave into Internet!
Authentication will be an enabling infrastructure! Today, trust online is established thru branding exercises. That’s why we only shop with the brands we know.. the taiwanese guy who sells cheap stuff online, to majority of us, sounds too good to be true and pass on what they have to say. Why, because we can’t authenticate/validate their claims! why not? Because we don’t have an Authentication Infrastructure!
WE WILL CHANGE THIS! (with a little help from everyone of course 🙂 )
Because we can’t validate claims (authenticate content) we only with online retailers whose brands we recognise. That is why Internet hasn’t happened for people who can’t throw hundreds of millions of dollars in building a brand! Thats pretty much 99.99% of the online retailers out there! They have no means to be able to say: Hey look, I am legit! Trust me! Shop with me!
Therefore, Authentication as an enabling technology will help us consumers and online retailers both! Actually it will enable things we haven’t even thought of! Internet hasn’t really happened yet!
Melih