Participation Literacy

In a podcast about Identity 2.0, Dick Hardt speaks about trusted “home sites” which could function as an identity manager. He reflects on the possibility that Amazon.com could function as that homesite or identity manager. He mentions Amazon since they are one of the few companies in the world with the possibility to realize the idea in a near future. If I understand him right, Amazon would store a person’s whole identity – or a substantial part of it, and distribute only parts of it to other companies. Identity transactions would be on “need to know” basis. If a company needs to know if you are a man or a woman that is the only information the identity manager would give to the requesting part – I assume that the identity owner has to give his or her permission before an identity transaction takes place.

Many of us might get a little bit nervous about this central identity storage. These identity warehouses will be flytraps for identity thieves - but on the other hand, we already have more sensitive goals for criminals, such as banks, so nothing new. People working at these places might misuse the information, and the whole company could become too powerful. Can we trust them, and if not – can we control them?

A comparison with a related praxis is a bank. We trust our bank with a very substantial part of our identity, and the bank makes daily transactions with information, which are even dearer to us than our identity – our money. Of course, identities and money are connected. If someone gets our bank identity, they can also get our money. Our banks seem to be “quite” good at guarding our identities. Most banking problems occur when we are incautious with our identities, i.e. we ourselves are the worst keepers of our identities. On the other hand, we are still somewhat on top of our identities – but only somewhat – and it is me myself who has to be incautious if someone is going to get my identity, and from that my.

I do not think the idea of an identity bank or warehouse is too wild. Our identities are already spread in cyberspace. Dick Hart’s idea is very controversial, and I am not sure that I like it, but it might still be the best idea, if someone does not come up with a better one.