sankarshan

The Circle of Care Designing Digital Guardianship in the Age of First-Person Credentials and Agentic AI

open.substack.com/pub/thetrust... - on designing for digital guardianship in the era of AI agents and systems

The Citizen Reassembled Nationalism, Populism, and the Architecture of First-Person Credentials

open.substack.com/pub/thetrust... : got around to writing down the thoughts and notes from many conversations over the past month.

"A new dataset, visualized as maps, reveals the extent to which African workers are indirectly employed in the tech sector, doing content moderation, customer service, and data annotation for AI models, among other jobs." restofworld.org/2025/big-tec...

Hot Planet Update: South Asian Heatwave, Worst-Ever Coral Bleaching Event, Indigenous Leaders Demand End to Oil & Gas Drilling, 1 in 2 Americans Breathe Unhealthy Air, & More A roundup of what happened, why it matters, and key context for climate change news during the week of April 19-16.

World’s Coral Reefs Suffer Worst Bleaching on Record

"Scientists say this is the most severe global coral bleaching event ever observed, with reefs from the South Pacific to the Caribbean turning white." More via @realitystudies.bsky.social:
www.realitystudies.co/p/hot-planet...

Quite the eye rolling read this is - time.com/7280114/dona...

"The success of the Indic Writing Systems Campaign 2025 demonstrates how committed different language communities are to conserving and recording South Asian writing systems. The content on underrepresented scripts has been greatly enhanced by these cooperative efforts, guaranteeing their survival for upcoming generations." Quote taken from the article "Indic Writing Systems Campaign 2025 Report", published on Diff on 31 March 2025.

The Indic Writing Systems Campaign 2025 rallied Wikimedians to improve coverage of South Asian scripts across Wikipedia and Wikidata. With more than 1,900 edits and dozens of new articles, the campaign helped bring ancient scripts into digital memory. Learn more ➡️ w.wiki/Dkaf

Bookstores have to be conscious of margins in an already saturated marketplace. So I’m not surprised at this situation. Just that it is odd to conclude that the Starmark at South City Mall has better display for new arrivals.

The Bahrisons outlet on Park Street Kolkata is a very underwhelming experience. The shelves are mostly popular reads and given the constraints of space there’s hardly a good book display. And that Blue Tokai gets much too loud.

This new craze of voluntarily uploading one’s images (presumably forsaking copyright and ownership) to get a stylised output which has a bunch of legal issues reminds me of a previous fad around “how will you age” social media game on another network. Nothing changes.

AI101 for New York is around 8 hours delayed from Delhi. How in the world does a major airline end up with such delays and no capacity to handle it? This will of course mean that AI102 will be similarly delayed out of New York.

The meme coins have been a special lesson in disbelief.

It is kind of fascinating to contrast “rubric of decentralisation” conversations in the decentralised ID world with the creation of strategic reserve of cryptocurrencies, launches of meme coins by leaders and State backed adoption of cryptocurrencies.

And in the absence of good information sharing we have mega brands like Titan glibly posting absolute garbage in the name of watch specifications. If you don’t believe me take a look at their site and select a random watch. This is from one of the premium watch makers in India.

What’s the point in not addressing the automatic watches for women and others with smaller wrist size space? Aren’t they interested in selling more watches? Time and quantity limited sales are fine to start with, but when is this going to shift to proper retail?

I think that the watch influencers from India who dominate the social media space do not understand these issues. Hence they do dramatic reading of the spec sheet and some marketing material. The brands should also look at case height of less than 13mm. They do not.

The other thing of course is about straps and bracelets. Non enthusiasts will always focus on how the watch feels when you wear it. Poor quality of straps and bracelets contribute to a poor wear experience and hence lowering of the perceived quality. Why are they doing this?

Some more thoughts on the Indian micro brands and watches. At this point none of the brands have watches with case sizes under 36mm. Most of them use a NH35* movement - that should make it reasonably easy to have this case diameter with nicer lug to lug distance. But they do not.

They use fairly reliable and inexpensive movements (the Seiko ones are at 30 USD or lower). So, the timekeeping aspect is taken care of. However, what makes a watch interesting and desirable is an expression of the innovation that the watchmaker demonstrates. That’s missing here.

I don’t think they have put in enough effort to help the consumers understand the value of the product at that price point. Add to that the obvious absence of good designs - it seems irresponsible to solely rely on supply side scarcity hype to drive pricing.

Watch Related

Does docs.google.com/spreadsheets... work?

There is also an undeniable absence of a "go anywhere, do anything" watch or a tool watch. Not every listed piece has to commemorate something. It can also be an excellent exhibition of the aesthetic sense of the watchmaker.

Nearly all offer a sub-par watch-wearing experience (how the watch feels in everyday wear) and invest little in building a community around the watches they list in their catalogs.

Interestingly, the micro-brands seem to focus exclusively on the watches for men (the case size is another hint), which overlap the lug widths (better options for straps, I suppose).

Currently, many watches from Indian micro-brands are available for sale in primary and secondary markets. So I put together a table (docs.google.com/.../1k38Bxy1...) to determine if there are any commonalities in watch sizes, movements, and types.

Lovely discussion on the ToIP call this morning about the notions of storytelling, using images as aids to narrative and ensuring that complex topics can be explained without lossy transmission. “Digital Trust” is a topic that can quickly become too technical.

On a yellow background, a faint wave pattern runs down the right side. On top, in a yellow rectangle: Showcase Below, the headline: Passing the microphone Below, a subhead: TGP’s first open mic for poets Next, the session date: 9 February Next, a circular window, and a name: You And below that, a descriptor: An unpublished poet Below, at centre, the logotype for The Goa Project Sessions, which has the words ‘The Goa Project’ in white text next to a stylised sunset-and-water image, and next to that, the word ‘Sessions’ within a stylised video camera image. In a black strip at the bottom: Once every four weeks on Sundays, 5:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. IST, on Zoom.

Calling poets!
Come to TGP’s first open mic.
More here: thegoaproject.wordpress.com/2025/01/23/p...
More about the reason why we’re doing an open mic (and about TGP Sessions) here: thegoaproject.wordpress.com

All said there are a number of merchants (both small and otherwise) who don’t seem to accept a Rupay card backed UPI payment instrument. www.moneycontrol.com/technology/f...

But is there active harm being done through deployment of such technology stacks? I am yet to hear or read about any such research.

And I am annoyed with the framing of “morally bankrupt” because that can well be a personal opinion but certainly does not hold up to scrutiny when one seeks to examine the slow adoption of DID based data exchange flows and credentialing. Can it be better? Absolutely.

The Principles of SSI are not a binding requirement on any ecosystem. However, adoption and adherence does provide an easy way to meaningfully measure if the resulting network is designed to have the safeguards for individuals and is human centric.