Joho the Blog
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May 30, 2003
Naomi's title is "Battles of Blood and Ink: Apophasis, Identity, and Naming Conventions across Digital and Theological Genres." Yikes! [Abstract] Discussions of digital identity say that it's about making online interactions secure and safe, etc. But real world interactions have never been characterized by this. DigitalID folks say that there's a possibility of returning to a ideal state. They want to move digitalID from the impersonal to a rich, complex human context, as if it's obvious that a human context is a good thing. [Is this in question? Uh-oh. :)] Some bloggers make up a pseudonym, some have multiple 'nyms, and some just use their real world name. Naomi uses a pseudonym. But many of us distrust people who have too many names. We associate names with identity. In fact, names come to stand for everything we know about the person's identity. But G-d has many names. How can they resolve into G-d's singular identity? She's going to look at just one commentator on this: The 13th Century Jew, Abraham Abulafia. Naomi hands out a poem he wrote in which blood and ink are at war in his soul. Ink wins. This is an intellectual triumphalism, which is like the digital ID folks' belief that eventually there will be a perfect online IDs that mirror our RW IDs. (I'm doing a particularly crumby job reproducing Naomi's argument.) Digital ID debates make normative statements about reality. They're assuming a metaphysics. "We shouldn't ignore the long history of philosophical and religious thought about the nature of identity." Posted
by D. Weinberger at May 30, 2003 12:41 PM
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Comments
DigitalID folks say that there's a possibility of returning to a ideal state. They want to move digitalID from the impersonal to a rich, complex human context, as if it's obvious that a human context is a good thing.
Call me cynical, but when companies woo me with talk about lost golden eras and rich human contexts, they seldom have my best interests at heart.
They talk about returning to the past to keep me from noticing that what they want is new--to be trusted in perpetuity with information that would let anybody who knows it pretend to be me, at least in a digital world.
And what does a "rich human context" mean in practice? Probably that big companies feel more secure when they have their hands on as much of my personal data as they can get.
Posted by: Betsy Devine | June 1, 2003 09:07 PM
I, personally, like humanity. Also, what Betsy said. The point I was making at the conference, however, was that the digID people are assuming that (a) our current forms of identification are "impersonal" and (b) that the ideal ("human context") is something modeled as closely as possible after the meatworld. I think there's room to develop and/or challenge both those assumptions in interesting ways, but first we have to make people see that they are assumptions rather than essentialist statements of How Things Really Are.
Otherwise, I'm happy that you picked up on how the blood/ink imagery replicated a lot of dualisms, including precisely this same "human"/"impersonal" distinction -- I don't think I made some of those points as clearly as I would've liked -- but at least Abulafia's occasionally trying to get past those dualisms, which is more than I can say for the digID debates so far. ;)
Posted by: Naomi Chana | June 2, 2003 02:45 AM
Two big Aha's for me! Thank you both.
And Betsy, great to meet you in your embodied form after all this time. Naomi, a pleasure to meet you for the first time.
Posted by: David Weinberger | June 2, 2003 08:09 AM
do i count as one of these "digital id folks"?
if so, 2 comments:
1. i'd say that i talk a lot about making transactions *more* secure. No transaction (real world, online or, dare i say, even divine) can be "secure" (with no qualifier).
2. I don't think I've ever heard someone talk about Digital ID returning us to some "ideal" context (at least, not someone that is seriously working in the field). I've heard people say that DigID would enable humans to act in the online world in a way similar to how they act in a physical world -- but ideal? Hell, i'm a believer and even I wouldn't argue that.
Despite all of that, i think the topic is fascinating. Clearly, we (the DigID folks) do/are making certain metaphysical assumptions. I wonder, though, if those assumptions aren't specific to us (DigID folks), so much as to the world of western economics in general....
good food for thought.
ejn
Posted by: eric norlin | June 2, 2003 08:30 AM
I don't think I've ever heard someone talk about Digital ID returning us to some "ideal" context ...
A very quick google (digital id human) returned this page (top result) with this quote:
http://www.digitalidworld.com/local.php?op=view&file=aboutdid
"The purpose of the Digital Identity is to restore the ease and security human transactions once had, when we all knew each other and did business face-to-face... "
Posted by: Betsy Devine | June 3, 2003 12:54 AM