Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Insular

Our identity world seems quite insular - take a look at an identity papers (white or otherwise) 'References' section, and I venture the sources are other identity papers (with usually a few security ones thrown in for credibility)

My list of other intellectual fields from which identity might learn:
  • economics - if the availability of a particular identity attribute grows scarce in the marketplace (because of privacy or legislative factors), does it become more valuable? Can you even assign a value to a particular attribute?
  • game theory - does the Prisoner's Dilemma bear on social network dynamics? Or on the standardization process?
  • evolutionary science- is the battle between phishers & security experts comparable to the 'arms races' that develop between predators & prey? If so, who is the prey?
  • history - could the 'identiverse' be carved up into non-overlapping regions of protocol dominion as agreed to by Spain annd Portugal in the 15th century Treaty of Tordesillas, i.e. SAML/WS-Fed get the enterprise, OpenID/Cardspace are ceded consumer space? Who would play the monopoly busting Sir Francis Drake?

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