Comments on: Identity is Mashed Up

By: dwaynedibbly

dwaynedibbly — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 03:42:59 +0000

Apparently a hamster ate my hyperlink in the above comment so here it is again.....http://informationphilosophy.blogspot.com/2009/03/when-i-was-student-there-was-proposed.html.Thnx Adam for pointing it out.

By: dwaynedibbly

dwaynedibbly — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 19:19:17 +0000

Thanks for the post, it helped inspire one of my own (here). I think that the identity problem is deep rooted. I suggest a different philosophical approach – essential using identity as a verb, rather than a noun; which makes identity less about protection, more about context-driven validation.

By: Dave Birch

Dave Birch — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 13:19:58 +0000

In practice won’t people settled for an obvious compromise between the practical and esoteric and end up having three or four different “identities” just as they have three or four different payment cards? What’s wrong with having a government identity, an eBay identity, a bank identity and a Facebook identity and navigating around the world (online and offline) using those, leaving the default minimum-disclosure in place most of the time and then switching other identities in when needed to support specific transactions? That seems workable.
Some of the identities will then be predominantly about relationships and communications.

By: Iang

Iang — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 14:49:26 +0000

I agree with the sentiment. Identity is not something that can be singular, nor can it more easily be made multiple. It’s a concept, a view, a metaphor, and as soon as we try and fix it in code, we lose.
Hence, good apps like Facebook ignore it, mostly. Really, applications and the real world, is about relationships and communication, and they care not a jot for Identity. Sometimes this means they make mistakes which some label as Identity mistakes, and the Identity-polizie come banging and force some changes. But as soon as that is over they get back to the application: relationships, communication, etc.
If we are talking about Identity, then we are not talking about people, relationships, commerce and we can’t be improving things for them. So, um, “was there a point?” :-)