Cross post to Phil Windley's DAY 2 IIW2005

Phil,

Btw, great IIW2005 event! On Day 2 I was thrusted to the front in organizing the PodCast for IIW2005 that focused on this very issue. Identity imho is what defines who you are, statically with an id issued to provide services by claims and dynamically with the use of these static ids to gain products/services through barter or other commerce... Back when I did my minor in Modern Germany from the Weimar Republic, I referenced heavily a work by a Harvard fellow, Dov Ronen, entitled __The Quest for Self-Determination__. In this book he discusses how groups form, first to assist one another to survive and secondarily then and more primarily now to satisfy the sense of belonging. This first type of group is called "functional aggregates." When a resource is constrained between two or more functional aggregates, these groups begin to conflict, resulting in a transformation to a "conscious aggregate." His study imho brings further clarity into the concept of identity - individuals and groups both have identity and are mutually inclusive and require one another for their respective definitions. The groups take over and begin issuing static ids of which the constituents use to "run" their life - basics, entertainment, religious, etc... Again, the "dynamics" define the "real" individual, which results in a pool or trail of privacy data... I have begun to develop these thoughts on my blog http://robmarano.blogspot.com

Joaquin Miller, Scot Lemon, Paul Trevithink, Bob Morgan, Alain Bloch, Jair, Gabe Walker, and Scott Mace were present at the IIW2005 podcast on "defining identity..."

let's keep this great dialog going, for without a common agreed-upon lexicon on digital identity, we'll find it difficult to actually communicate as engineers in developing the collaborative pieces of this difficult but all-too-important puzzle / conundrum - digital identity to help fuel the Internet as THE channel of people's life!

/rob