November 20, 2002
Thu, 21 Nov 2002 04:43:41 GMT
Esther nails the essence. "...it took time and patience, but the trend now is positive." "Spreading DCT" can work.Sony has a digital identity problem, not us.
Jon's solution is nothing more than a solution he's been thinking about for a very long time because the concept of digital identity is more of a convenient label than it is a solution to a real problem. The solution that we need to give more thought to is how we create a relationship between our One True Identity and our virtual comings and goings. The problem of identity is well-solved (ask Grog's Mom, she had her act together - too bad her One True Identity was some unintelligible muttering). Making it machine readable is much more interesting. But its not really about My Digital Identity any more than it is about My Television Identity, My Newspaper identity or My Headstone identity. It is about making sure that who *you* think might live behind a name actually is behind that name.Identifying and confirming what the real link between me and my 01010101 moniker is needs to go a lot deeper than forcing the dot populi to deal with managing YAI (yet-another-identity). And this is where Sony might be of some assistance. The fact is, in the online world, Sony's digital identity is sometimes Jennifer Lopez and sometimes its Ripley. Where this gets sticky is that Sony's real identity is "The company that makes sure that Jennifer Lopez and Ripley each make their way into my living room."
In other words, Sony lives at the Transport Layer, but they haven't figured it out yet - much in the same way that I'm a transport layer for my identity. Figuring out what makes my identity valuable in an online world and creating a durable link between it and me (the transport layer) solves a big chunk of the problem that keeps Mr. Sony up at night worrying about Mr. Napster.Thu, 21 Nov 2002 03:10:22 GMT
I was talking to DarrylG [nobloglinkyet] about how blogs work and he expressed confusion over the navigation primitives that we've (I mean "we" as in "bloggers") decided to employ (Okay, the primitives that Dave and Evan liked). He was referring to the
blogmasters use (or the <%permalink%>that I use) to denote the end of a specific post combined with a link to the permanent URL for that particular post. What was interesting about his question was because while the primitive made tons of sense to this blogmaster, it made me realize how confusing this new web was for the average user - given that the navigation that we employ is for each other and not for the reader. Makes me think twice about the Reader's Movement that ElliotN brought up last week. Note to self: Ask Elliot what he meant when he referred to the Reader's Movement.