Something important happened this last week, it’s a new phrase of “First Person” introduced by Doc Searls, I deeply agree with Dazza Greenwood that “This is big” and the power of a common understanding of this concept+phrase will help us escape the black holes of centralization.

If I were to summarize why I’m so excited about this simple phrase it’s that it embodies the raw essence of the principle Person-First, putting people first, the very thing that is being squeezed out of all of our technology from every side right now as it’s twisted into corporate-first and government-first.  We the people are being lost in the battle between those two trying to control and manage all technology and information flow.

I’d like to say that most of my life has been dedicated to creating First-Person Technology, from Jabber, to Wikia Search, the Locker Project, and now telehash, they are all efforts to create systems that puts a person in control first.

Anything that you alone control, that has no other master, no company that can disable it, no cloud API that it depends on to work, nobody that can snoop on it without you knowing… that is First-Person Technology, and I want more of it, I will make more of it, and I will ask everyone I can to do the same.