Internet of Record

Principles

Principles of the Internet of Record

Ten commitments we keep returning to as we test the thesis. They are working principles, held with conviction and open to revision.
  1. 01

    Entities Before Pages

    The entity exists independently of the page describing it. A page can be deleted, redesigned or duplicated without the entity changing.

  2. 02

    Records Before Surfaces

    Information should have a persistent underlying representation, so that every surface renders the same underlying truth.

  3. 03

    Persistent Identity

    Important entities should have durable identifiers that survive rebrands, migrations and platform changes.

  4. 04

    Structured Information

    Machines should be able to understand attributes and relationships without inferring them from prose.

  5. 05

    Provenance Matters

    Information should retain evidence of where it came from, so a claim can be traced rather than trusted blindly.

  6. 06

    Freshness Matters

    Records should represent current state while preserving meaningful history. Staleness is a correctness problem.

  7. 07

    Verification Matters

    Claims and attributes should support verification, with a visible difference between asserted and verified.

  8. 08

    Permissions Matter

    Humans and agents need clear authority to view or modify information. Access should be explicit, scoped and auditable.

  9. 09

    Humans and Machines

    Infrastructure should support both human experiences and machine consumption, without forcing a choice between them.

  10. 10

    Records Should Be Portable

    A record should not be trapped inside a single surface or platform. Portability is what separates infrastructure from a product.

The page is an interface.
The Record is the entity representation.