[coldtea]

>I've never understood that way of viewing things. For me identity is a right.

Historically "identity" wasn't a right, but something imposed on people, for better tracking and controlling them by authorities...

>In an oppressive state identity surely could be oppression, just like everything else, but in a democratic country?

Oppression is not about democratic vs totalitarian state. McCarthy and Hoover, to mention just two examples, reigned over others in the good ole democratic US of A.

Not to mention very few (if any) countries have actual direct democracy, or give the people say in how they want to be governed, from the constitution and downwards.

[mirimir]

> Historically "identity" wasn't a right, but something imposed on people, for better tracking and controlling them by authorities...

I used to own a wonderful book about the history of data science. As I recall, starting in maybe the 1600s, experts in France and Germany were tasked with tracking populations, birth and death rates, economic activity, and so on. And the primary goal was to aid in military planning. Unfortunately, I've lost the book and forgotten the title and author. And the search terms are so topical as to be useless.

[lmkg]

Was it "Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk"?

[mirimir]

Thanks, but I don't think so.

I do recall reading it, however.

[closeparen]

Identity can’t be “imposed,” come on. Personhood is continuous across time and space. All a system can influence is your ability to lie about this. Ability to deceive the state can protect your freedom but inability to trust others also has a cost, there has to be a balance.

[motohagiography]

(Knowing nothing about the author of this reply at all, upon reading the comment as a reference) - as spoken by someone who has yet to have been down the rabbit hole of what "personhood" might mean.

Identity is a philosophical problem and a relationship, and so far we've managed to kick the can down the road of what an identity might mean outside the nation state, but the internet may prove to be a bit of a forcing function in deciding some of these questions we had the luck to avoid. I've been doubtful of digital identity startups because most of them are just substituting an opaque problem in crytography for the capital-H hard problem in political philosophy, which originates in prehistorical problems in collecting a census.

Maybe OAuth with some OIDC extensions and attributes solves everything, and FIDO has solved it, but if there were a way to bet against that, personally I'd go all in.

[closeparen]

This is a really fascinating conversational pattern. It's like I said "when I let go of a ball it falls down to the ground" and you said "the meaning of 'falling' is a question as old as Genesis, and 'down' depends on your frame of reference." There's a sense in which both of those things are true, just like everything you've said here. And yet.

[motohagiography]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personhood

I recommend starting there on personhood, as like the role of gravity in your analogy, it's a complex enough topic that it would be worth reading up on, since it's more plausible that the details of it matter than the implication that I am some kind of wizard engaged in mesmerism.

[coldtea]

>Identity can’t be “imposed,” come on. Personhood is continuous across time and space.

I'm not talking about "identity" as in "being somebody".

I'm talking about identity as in identification, documents, and so on -- which is what we were discussing (as in "identity provider" in software terms).