You are the network of identity and relationships or why identity projects fail.
You are the network
More I read about identity and identity systems — the more I see that one universal identity is a mistake.
I currently enjoy reading.
One big thing about identity systems from the book is relations and identity networks.
We all know that humans are social creatures and tend to create a network. The biggest discovery is that we act with these social networks and communities as an identity network. So our representation of self is so complex and sliced into multiple relationships.
More about the concept of self as a network can be found here:
The identity metasystem should respect and reflect this part. It is almost impossible to model human interaction with a single fixed identity.
Fluid Multi-Pseudonymity
Now let's talk about relationships. You have a thousand and a thousand interactions that create a relationship you maintain. Some relationships are long-term, some are short-term, and many relationships in real life are ephemeral and exist only in the scope of interaction with others.
Identity systems == Relation management systems
Pseudonymity is the near-anonymous state in which a user has a consistent identifier that is not their real name: a pseudonym. In pseudonymous systems, real identities are only available to site administrators. Pseudonymity allows users to communicate with one and other in a generally anonymous way.
So Pseudonymity relations are ideal for privacy-preserving applications from the user's point of view. An example of a Pseudonymity relation is a coffee shop where you buy coffee daily — so baristas identify you and know that you are a regular customer and can guess what kind of coffee you order, but that is all he needs.
Summary
The challenge of modern identity projects
- they try to create global and single user identifier and ignore a complex self concept
- they force users to create only long-term relations
- they ignore the Pseudonymity nature of day-to-day relations in the real world.
