Persistent digital identity

from http://www.headmap.com/blog/

3 years ago, [when the headmap books were written] most individuals didnt really have a persistent stable identity point on the internet. They had email, but that doesnt persist and doesnt have an address independent of the mailbox its in. There were web pages, but most were linked to themes or projects or companies or schools and their identity tended to be sprawling and impersonal. Now with blogs there is a sense of an individuals time and location stamped presence on the web, blogs are for the most part inherently personal, subjective, locatable, extensions of individuals.

Blogs resurrect the concept of persistent identity. [I blog therefore I am].

Individuals have instant access and control over that identity.

http://www.headmap.com/blog/

December 28, 2002

Persistent digital identity thoughts

3 years ago, [when the headmap books were written] most individuals didnt really have a persistent stable identity point on the internet. They had email, but that doesnt persist and doesnt have an address independent of the mailbox its in. There were web pages, but most were linked to themes or projects or companies or schools and their identity tended to be sprawling and impersonal. Now with blogs there is a sense of an individuals time and location stamped presence on the web, blogs are for the most part inherently personal, subjective, locatable, extensions of individuals.

Blogs resurrect the concept of persistent identity. [I blog therefore I am].

Individuals have instant access and control over that identity.

A blog makes location more interesting. The individual is presumed to be moving, and to be having a subjective view of the space through which they are moving - whether virtual space (websites or whatever) or physical places.

A blog is not the same as a website, its an extension of an individual, it has an address

the individual has a physical location and is linked to the blog, a virtual location

the blog subjectively references addresses (physical and virtual)

A blog is potentially the vital conceptual bridge between email and a website, the one being private and the other often being too sprawling or collective to function as a simple personal identity.

It used to be that everyone who used the internet had something called a .fingerfile; which was a text file entirely written by and related to you, the user. You could put anything you liked into your .finger file and it served as your public identity to other users on the UNIX system you were using. You would type finger username and the person with that usernames finger file would come up.

The way internet use has evolved means that most people use email without having to deal directly or at all with unix and consequently most people dont use finger files. Subsequently the main expressions of their personal identity online were email (for the majority) and web pages (for the few).

An email address is an identity, but you can only send email to it or receive email from it. It lacks the functionality of a finger file, it carries no identity information independent of the status conferred by the address and whatever email is sent or not sent in reply.

Web pages largely evolved linked to themes or projects or companies or schools and their identity tended to be impersonal, or personal but sprawling and not functioning like a simple finger file (which in some sense is just a status message telling you something about the user and whether they are logged in)

The blog, which is sub-species of web page, finally resurrects the finger functionality. It is independent of whatever webpages may belong to the author and owner of the blog, it functions as a status message which can be referenced whether the user is on the internet or not, it is subjective and owned primarily by individuals.

[&]

Blogs resurrect the concept of persistent identity. [I blog therefore I am].

A blog makes location more interesting. The individual is presumed to be moving, and to be having a subjective view of the space through which they are moving - whether virtual space (websites or whatever) or physical places.

[&]

..identity is a *vital* concept for the future of mobile computing.

Blogging may well be the basis for an open source equivalent of microsofts .net passport intiative. You log into your blogserver (whether running on your personal server or on a public service like blogger.com) you upload personal data (including your physical location) and your entire internet identity is mediated by your blogserver.

Some of this information will be public (your blogface)

But if a company or an individual wants to negotiate with you, or you with them, it will all happen through your blogserver. You log into your blogserver and it handles passwords etc as you move through physical and virtual space

Blogs are models for future persistent identity. [forget hotmail ..read the business plans of the blogservers]

Posted by sfisher at April 8, 2003 10:06 AM