Comments on: Owning the People Namespace http://alteregozi.com/2009/06/29/the-people-namespace/ Mon, 20 Jun 2011 12:25:47 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ By: Ofer Egozi http://alteregozi.com/2009/06/29/the-people-namespace/#comment-152 Tue, 30 Jun 2009 13:35:27 +0000 http://alteregozi.com/?p=484#comment-152 Nothing in the world is ever new, if you go down the path of Kohelet. But some things are, well, different than before.

The main point here is not that the concept is new, but rather that this new “arrangement” is being set up as we speak (so, yes, I’m sure the first people to organize a state or issue a passport, did not take that lightly), and that it’s happening at an incredible pace, so you must not blink or you’ll miss the moment.

We have our institutional safeguards today, built and perfected over centuries, against state-based identity-thefts, arbitrary decisions, breach of trust etc. The equivalent mechanisms in online identity are far from being there, and for now it all depends on the good nature of the individuals inducing those magnetic irregularities.

]]> By: Pasha http://alteregozi.com/2009/06/29/the-people-namespace/#comment-151 Tue, 30 Jun 2009 13:19:36 +0000 http://alteregozi.com/?p=484#comment-151 This is, of course, not new.
We’ve been required to “trust” some organization of human beings for a while.
100,000 years ago you decided to join a group of other humans to kill more mammoths. You had to trust the other members to not eat you when you’re asleep. Sometimes this trust was broken.
We trust our state, which issues our real-world identity, the passport, to not arbitrarily jail us, kill us or send us to be killed for some greater good. Sometimes this trust is broken.
Now we have to trust another type of organization of people which is a privately held company that deals with magnetic irregularities on disks stored in big closets somewhere in Southern California.

What’s the difference?

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