Where is Osmio?

The quick answer is that you'll find Osmio in the most convenient location on earth.

 

Where is that, you may ask?

 

Well, you're probably there right now.

 

Osmio is on your desktop, or in your pocket, or on your lap; it's wherever you choose to connect to the online world via your chosen information appliance.

 

No, Really, Where is Osmio?

But that's only part of an answer.

 

While we try to avoid the word "virtual," let's discuss where Osmio is located in the jurisdictional sense.

 

We have referred to this, our favorite place, alternatively as a city and as a city-state. (An example of a city-state in the physical world is Singapore, which while existing as a municipality participates in the world's affairs as a sovereign nation.)

 

Osmio's principal export to the rest of the world is authenticity. All of the components of Osmio's authenticity, whether provided by the ounce or by the metric ton, start with of digital credentials that are based upon duly constituted public authority. The foundational credential for all of Osmio's authenticity is the Digital Birth Certificate™.

 

Now we run into a problem of nomenclature. If you live in one part of the world, your birth certificate was issued by your country's health ministry. If you live in another part of the world it was issued by the vital records department of your city hall. To complicate matters, birth certificates are sometimes the business of a provincial jurisdiction.

 

And the complication doesn't stop there, because the credentials that we issue attest not only to identity but to professional qualifications and the reliability of online spaces as well. In some parts of the world, architects and contractors are licensed by a department or agency of the national government, while in other parts they are the product of a municipality or a provincial authority. The same goes for building permits, occupancy permits, and the source of the authority by which the standards on which such permits are based.

 

For Osmio to succeed in its mission, bringing authenticity to the whole world, it must be as understandable as possible. People must be able to recognize similiarities to sources of public authority with which they are familiar, be they city hall, the state house, provincial capital building or national ministry.

Let's consider some of the various ways in which we might meet this goal of understandability:

We have referred to Osmio as the capital city of the nation of Bookland (http://freebookland.com/). We could create national ministries in Bookland that are by statute identical to those of departments in the government of the City of Osmio. Services could be provided and maintained from one source, appearing differently to visitors depending upon where they came from.

We could emulate Singapore and other city-states, and simply refer to Osmio as a city-state.

We could make Osmio into some sort of provincial jurisdiction.

The people of Osmio hope that the good people at the ITU can give us some guidance in this decision.

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