Tuesday, January 23, 2007

digital identity: what's the big deal?

So here's another thing I just don't get. I mean, is there some sort of crisis going on here? I don't know about you, but I certainly know who I am. This is from an article ZDnet News ran on Monday, called Liberty Alliance courts open-source projects. Just listen to these people!
"The idea behind OpenLiberty is to provide a community for open-source developers to communicate and collaborate on open identity standards," Jason Roualt, vice president of Liberty Alliance, said in an interview. "There are a few open-source efforts around identity, but the main thing that they are missing is the ability to support identity-based Web services, getting beyond single sign-on to sharing identity attributes."
I can't for the life of me understand what they're getting so worked up about. Can you? Why, here at Kat Herding Media, we all share identities! I'm going to have a smoke and think about this.

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3 comments:

  1. UnknownJanuary 24, 2007 1:55 AM

    There is an old cartoon originally pulbished in the New Yorker titled "No one on the Internet knows you're a dog". http://www.unc.edu/depts/jomc/academics/dri/idog.html

    In a simple way it talks to the fact that your digital identity is not necessarily linked to you human identity. For online commerce it is critical that both parties can establish that the other is who they say they are. To achieve this we need a universal means of enabling this exchange of credentials in a trusted way.

    This typically provokes an impassioned debate about privacy, who should run the service and how to implement it - the latter being what the Liberty Alliance is all about.

    Given the cartoon was published in 1993 then you can see how long this debate has been running ..

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  2. steven edward streightJanuary 24, 2007 7:51 AM

    I know that Derrida said that the cogito of that frilly Frenchie philosopheme "I think there I am" might not work if the "I" is mad.

    "I think I am Napoleon, therefore I am" is the imbecilic trace in all language and not necessarily inapplicable to the current scene.

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  3. AnonymousJanuary 24, 2007 8:17 AM

    > "I think there I am"

    Well maybe he was looking in a mirror. I say that to myself sometimes when I look in the mirror. I think: there I am!

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