John H. Clippinger

Research Scientist, MIT Media Lab

John Henry Clippinger is co-founder and Executive Director of ID³ (Institute for Innovation & Data Driven Design), 

a 501 C(3)  non profit organization (idcubed.org)  formed to  develop and field test an open source software trust

frameworks (Open Mustard Seed) for data-driven services, infrastructures, and enterprises. He is also a Research 

Scientist at the MIT Media Lab’s Human Dynamics Group and a Distinquished Research Fellow at the Institute for

 the Future, Steering Committee and Advisory Board of Blockchain Ecosystem Network (BECON) , and former 

Chairman of the ITU Working Group on Identity and Authentication.  Previously, Dr. Clippinger was founder and 

Co-Director of The Law Lab (www.lawlab.org) at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School.

He was also a Senior Fellow at the Berkman Center where co-founded the Project Higgins, an open source, and 

identity framework (www.eclipse.org/higgins) to give users control over their personal information.

Dr. Clippinger is co-editor with David Bollier, of From Bitcoin to Burning Man and Beyond: The Quest for Identity and

Autonomy in a Digital Society, 2014, Previously, he was Director of Intellectual Capital, Coopers & Lybrand and the

founder of four artificial intelligence software companies.  He  consults with companies, foundations, NGOs, and 

government agencies on technology, policy and business strategy issues related to privacy, trust frameworks and  social networks.

Dr. Clippinger is a graduate of Yale University and holds a MA. and Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania, 

where completed his thesis on a computational model of discourse composition, (Meaning and Discourse, 

Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977)