Digital Identity

Wide vs. Deep

I think of digital identity as the sum total of your digital information. Normally when I use this term I am limiting this to information which is available online.

In a social network like Facebook I see your digital identity as being your profile at a minimum. Then it starts to get wider. After you use Facebook for a while you might have added photos, videos or updates. These broaden you digital identity.

You might also have a Flickr account, a YouTube account, a Twitter account, etc.

In each of these accounts you would have a profile and other shared content.

You digital identity is getting much wider.

Since all this information is either available to everyone or everyone in a group I think of this as your top level of digital identity. Like the Missouri River it can be a mile wide and a foot deep.

I think depth in digital is the level below this. Depth is defined to me by your ability to own and control your digital identity's privacy and security levels.

With most current social networks you can only share on a secure level with other individuals if you set up unique closed accounts with just the two of you or unique groups with just the two of you.

Depth will be available to your digital identity when you can share anything with any selected other digital identity from within a single online account. This will become very important for business and commercial relationships.

I may have said this before, but it is on my mind today again - so, current social web platforms are like going to a party. It is great to share with everyone. But there are many times when you need to leave the party, go into the library say and close the door to have a private conversation. This is depth.

The first tools that enable depth will be less interactive than you may wish. They will provide the ability to share privately and securely static documents and media. They will not allow those documents and media to share data with other applications.

The goal of data portability will be to grow over time to allow you to release selected digital identity pieces to not just other people, but to other applications. As this grows we will begin to see the promise of networks blossom.

Have any of you found services doing this yet? I would love to learn about them.

More Thoughts on Digital Identity

Your thoughts on this will be particularly helpful.

Is your Digital Identity only able to move sideways?

Here is what I am trying to get a handle on. In the social networks I have used I am able to invite in friends or be invited. Then we can share things back and forth.

In a business setting this allows me to share with my co-workers. That way anyone who takes a call can help the customer. That is a good thing as far as it goes.

But what if I am responsible for the group. Can I see everything going on in my group without letting the group see everything I am doing?

To me that would be allowing Identity information to move sideways in the group and allowing it to move upward into the manager.

Now what if I wanted to allow access to part of my Digital Identity, but not all of it, to be shared with my group and one specific person not in my group. 

To me that would be moving Identity information sideways and down.

Do any of you who use social networks have any thoughts on this. Can the networks you use now do this type of thing?

Thanks for any feedback.

Digital Identity and Profile / Update Aggregators

I have been considering the concepts of digital identity and the way it is used in current social networks.

The idea of a digital identity seems to mostly have been implemented as a profile with name, address, web links, some media and a friends or followers list at this point. It is a start. Better than nothing.

Some services are trying to move the dime off of having to create a unique profile for every additional social network you join. This is the next obvious step. It seems to me that it runs into the beautiful irony that now you have to join the correct digital identity aggregator to match your networks. If you don't, now you have a new layer of aggregators you have to join.

This issue will generate a grand but fruitless debate about standards. The folks that develop a standard will see it as a solution to bring peace and harmony to the world. Plenty of others will see it as giving up a proprietary advantage. (Here comes the data portability gang) 

I am always reminded of the X-Files episode where Muldar was granted three wishes. He wished for world peace. He got a world where he was the last human on the planet.

If you have two people you are going to have two opinions and two motivations and disagreements. This is not a bad thing. 

Diversity is a strength that we need to embrace, not control.

Take much of the effort and resources used to try to mold the digital identity world to a single standard and apply it to understanding the reality - even the virtual reality - of differences and how to accommodate that with the goals of social.

I have tried to think of instances where standards have worked. I figured this would help show the limits of standards.

The first, as a web user, is the Internet Protocols or the World Wide Web core level structures. But, of course, after thinking about these I quickly come to the admission that this is only one existing standard among many for electronic communication.

Finding standards that work seems to always include finding definitions to severely limit the environment in which standards are sued. The smaller the environment - the more closed the environment -  the better chance standards can exist or succeed.

What are your examples?

After more thought I am down to standards such as human beings need food of some sort, air to breathe and water.

I guess that a better list might actually lead to world peace and harmony. But that list seems beyond my ability. How about you?

What is it that gives us the hubris to believe that even though we can not all speak the same language on this planet, share the same beliefs or have the same cell phone backbone we somehow think we can set standards that will give us this online?

Is our vision of the online world so much smaller than the reality of the physical world?

I think the story of the Tower of Babel is a story not of punishment, but of freeing the creative human experience. That freeing leads to the ability to test learning and growth in many more ways. The benign despot may well be the most successful form of government every conceived, but it would have put Charles Darwin out of the theory business.

It is going to be fascinating to watch as we - all of we - continue to address these basic human issues down the road of this online journey.