employee card as a means of unlocking privileged information contained on the card. When the control system has obtained the information it wants, generally to authenticate the identity of the card bearer to its satisfaction, the employee removes the card. For the transcendent personal device to function as an effective fiduciary on behalf of its bearer, this communication exchange between such a control system and the transcendent personal device must be of a peer-to-peer variety. The transcendent personal device must be able to initiate interactions with external systems on its own terms. It cannot merely respond to requests or commands if it is to truly effect complex policy operations on behalf of its bearer. Today, some secure cores have already started on the path to liberation. A Subscriber Identity Module in a GSM mobile phone is able to piggyback a note on a normal command response that says in effect, “Now, ask me what to do next.” Further, if the phone also has contactless payment via a wireless protocol called Near-Field Communication (NFC), the phone can get involved in a peer-to-peer payment transaction. As the current evolution progresses further, transcendent personal devices will therefore be autonomous agents, in that they will be able to start a communication exchange just as the humans they represent do.

Subordinate only to the need of transcendence, self-actualization drives individuals to assert eminence over their personal situations. Maslow characterized self-actualizing individuals in terms of a number of traits that collectively give rise to this interpretation. Again, extracting concepts from his Toward a Psychology of Being, we can include among these traits that of assessing the situation presented by the direct environment in objective rather than subjective terms and interpreting the presentation of issues as opportunities for solutions as opposed to threats to be avoided at all costs. Maslow further suggested that self-actualized individuals perceive the world as a pursuit of peak experiences rather than ongoing acceptance of the mundane. When viewed from the perspective of the transcendent personal device, we see the direct manifestation of our more generally stated requirement that the device must function as a fiduciary for its bearer, not for some other external entity. Moreover, this need requires the ability of the device to initiate an interaction environment with other parties as opposed to simply responding to them. Through its sensori-motor facilities, the transcendent personal device should actively engage the dynamic world that it finds itself in. The fulfillment of this need will evoke a variety of subordinate needs that will in turn evoke specific requirements for technical capabilities to satisfy the appetites derived from these needs. Indeed, many of these capabilities will present as extremely innovative departures from the capabilities of current personal electronic devices.

According to Maslow’s original discussions regarding the human hierarchy of needs, creativity is another manifestation of self-actualization. He makes the observation that the display of creativity is not necessarily an indicator of either physical or psychological health, using as illustrations of this fact a number of writers and artists known to stray rather far afield from what was perceived to be “normal” conditions during their lifetimes. Within the transcendent personal device, we would anticipate that it is a function of cognitive needs to monitor and maintain the normalcy of health of the system and its connections to the outside world, including to its bearer. Self-actualization needs of the transcendent personal device will address the capabilities of the system to determine and apply policy in creative ways in the face of threats of either an anticipated or an unanticipated nature. This suggests that perhaps the most far reaching facility required of the transcendent personal device is the capability for it to act not just on behalf of its bearer, but to act in seamless concert with that bearer. More basic needs should address the necessity for cognitive facilities of the transcendent personal device to be in optimum synchronization with the sensori-motor system of the computer as well as with the human bearer of the computer. The facilities of self-actualization must make use of that synchrony to effect policy on behalf of the bearer.

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