Spherical Cow Consulting

Heather Flanagan
September 2, 2025January 21, 2026
Deep Thoughts, Podcast

Roads, Robots, and Responsibility: Why Agentic AI Needs Identity Infrastructure

We don’t spend much time thinking about the roads we drive on—until one cracks, collapses, or dumps us somewhere we didn’t mean to be. Identity in the age of agentic AI? Same deal. It’s infrastructure. Like a good road, it needs to be ready for traffic we can’t imagine.

Robotic Hand Touching on Black Background. 3D Render. Artwork to represent bots and their incentives.

Heather Flanagan
August 26, 2025January 13, 2026
Hot Takes, Podcast

Bot or Not? Why Incentives Matter More Than Identity

Let’s start with a confession: I love bots. Or at least, I love the idea of them. They’re efficient, tireless, and, if designed well, can be downright helpful. (They can also be downright unhelpful, but that's a topic for a different blog post.) But the incentives around bot traffic are completely out of balance, and that makes things messy.

Working group chair skills bring people together

Heather Flanagan
August 19, 2025January 13, 2026
Deep Thoughts, Podcast

Working Group Chair Skills: Standards Work Isn’t Just for Coders

This one’s for everyone who’s ever said, "I’m not technical enough to participate in standards development." If you’ve wondered what working group chair skills actually matter, I have news for you: you don’t need to be a spec-writing wizard to be effective. I do get it, though.

A group of bots representing the new AI family of activities.

Heather Flanagan
August 12, 2025January 13, 2026
Deep Thoughts, Podcast

Agentic AI in the Open Standards Community: Standards Work or Just Hype?

If you want to follow what's happening in AI, it helps to know where the conversations are happening. That doesn't just mean the headlines and white papers; it means the standards bodies, working groups, and protocol discussions shaping the infrastructure AI systems will have to live with (and live inside).

Businessman looking at an internet failure screen on a computer. He is in an office. Lack of resilience in tech opens the door to disinformation, misinformation, and malinformation.

Heather Flanagan
August 5, 2025January 13, 2026
Deep Thoughts, Podcast

Not Just a Technical Problem: Why Fighting Disinformation Needs Resilient Infrastructure

Disinformation. Misinformation. Malinformation. These terms get used interchangeably, but they’re not the same thing. That distinction matters when designing resilient infrastructure that supports trust. Most of our efforts to address these problems focus on content, activities like fact-checking, moderation, and takedown requests.

Artistic rendering of internet governance networking.

Heather Flanagan
July 29, 2025January 13, 2026
Deep Thoughts, Podcast

What WSIS+20 Taught Me About Digital Identity and Global Governance

I went to Geneva to understand what, if anything, people were saying regarding digital identity and standards in a governance-focused forum. My brain is now full. I adore the topic of identity and the standards development process; everything from the brilliant minds, the challenges, and the intense edge cases.

Many leather wallets on a colored pastel background. Top View

Heather Flanagan
July 22, 2025January 21, 2026
Deep Thoughts, Industry Ideas, Podcast

Kill the Wallet? Rethinking the Metaphors Behind Digital Identity

Much like "the cloud" or "the superhighway", the metaphor of a "wallet" has become convenient shorthand for a tangle of technical, policy, and usability decisions. As we keep building out digital identity ecosystems with verifiable credentials, identity wallets, and cross-jurisdictional trust models, I ask: is the metaphor still helping us?

Decorative image for cultural context (business woman overlaying chip design)

Heather Flanagan
July 15, 2025January 13, 2026
Deep Thoughts, Podcast

Local Flavors, Global Reach: Why Digital Identity Needs Cultural Context

What do you think of when someone says "digital identity"? Biometrics? Login credentials? A string of JSON data? Your social media account? The answer probably depends on where you are, how old you are, and/or how tech-savvy you are.

A three-person debate on the privacy considerations of identity verification with mobile driver's licenses.

Heather Flanagan
July 8, 2025January 13, 2026
Deep Thoughts, Podcast

When Verification Calls Home: Three Views on Privacy, Risk, and Digital Credentials

There’s been renewed attention lately on mobile driver’s licenses (mDLs) and the ISO/IEC specification that defines them. One of the more surprising aspects of the specification is that it allows the entity verifying a credential to contact the issuer directly in real time, a capability known as "phone home."

Heather Flanagan
July 1, 2025January 13, 2026
Deep Thoughts, Podcast

Resilience Isn’t Free: What Standards Can (and Can’t) Prepare Us For

Resilience is on my list of the top ten buzzwords of the year. Whether we’re looking at geopolitical turmoil, AI disruption, or yet another IdP outage, it’s clear that the infrastructure we’ve relied on for decades is straining under new (and not-so-new) pressures.