I wrote yesterday about why I believe there is a brawl brewing over identity. In that post I suggested that convenience will be the main driver for the adoption of a “unified identity” model in which the large players (Yahoo, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon, etc) will become the identity providers for their users across the Net. But I don’t think it’s the only driver. The unified approach is a more direct translation of our physical world identity model to the online world. While I may change the clothes I wear and vary my hair cut slightly (the latter increasingly less by choice), I show up with the same face and using the same name everywhere and make no attempts to conceal my identity. In general, in the physical world the use of aliases and disguises tends to be associated with covert or illicit activities.
Part of this is of course simply a reflection of the much higher cost of establishing and maintaining mulitple identities in the physical world, but another underlying factor is captured in a great quote by the Brazilian jeweler H. Stern who said “There are no semi precious stones, just like there are no semi pregant women or semi honest men." While he was making a point about the gemstones on which he built his business, it’s been the "no semi honest men” part that has stuck in my mind. If I play tennis with someone and they constantly call shots on their side out even if they are clearly in or on the line, this will definitely shape my judgment of how they would behave in a business transaction and I believe rightly so. I would like to be able to draw a similar inferences online without having to puzzle together someone’s identity across different services. I want others to be able to do the same and therefore try to register on services as albertwenger whenever that username is available (luckily with my name that is almost always the case).
