The social benefits of digital identity

At the digital ID conference, I met for the first time, or got to know better, a whole bunch of folks whose identities were formerly, to me, mainly digital, including:

AKMA
Bryan Field-Elliot
David Weinberger
Doc Searls
Drummond Reed
Eric Norlin
Nat Torkington
Nikolaj Nyholm
Phil Becker
Phil Windley
Phil Wolff

Most of us have weblogs into which we project a lot of ourselves. As a result, face-time is different than it otherwise would be. Our digital identities precede us, and create a rich context for live discourse.

One of the questions arising from this conference was: "Why do people, as opposed to governments and corporations, care about digital identity?" The positive social effects of reputation awareness are surely part of the answer.


Former URL: http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/2002/10/14.html#a466