I don’t know that anyone needs correcting on this point, but that won’t stop me…

Identity isn’t a continuum with anonymity at one end and documented, certified, authenticated ID on the other. It probably never was and it certainly isn’t online. There’s a third vertex: Pseudonymity. Pseudonyms online are not midway between anonymity and ID. They’re different in kind, but enough on the same plane that any discussion of anonymity and ID that does not include pseudonyms is likely to go wrong.

It’s hard to find an exact analog to this in the real world. Social roles aren’t really the same as pseudonyms. But that means that we have to be extra special careful to include pseudonyms in our thinking so we don’t port inappropriate real world schema into the new virtual world, especially since the porting is being done top down by the traditional fear-based organizations (big corps and governments). [Tags: digitalID id anonymity pseudonymity ]

Categories: Uncategorized dw