| Why make it a unique number? As Google+ has realized with circles, we have different associations we make in life. Some of those are widely separate identities. I see no reason why any identity I have on one site should be associated with one I have on another, if I deem that it not be. For some purposes (voting, financial transactions, long-lived financial accounts such as SSI or a life insurance policy), you'd want to tie one identity to another. Beyond that, it's simply a control and surveillance front. Even in the cases I've mentioned, weak authentication has long been the rule. Strong authentication in voting is often tied to poll taxes and other means of restricting the electorate. Public corporations (literally "anonymous societies" in French) are highly psuedonymous. Cash (and digital equivalents) are untraceable. And numbered bank accounts are the stuff of legend in both finance and noir literature. Identity is a very, very deep, and frought, question. Curiously, G+ is turning into quite the discussion of it, from circles to gender to names to multiple identities. One of the most classic instances of pseudonymity is among revolutionaries. It played a large role in the American Revolution, particularly among pamphleteers (the 18th century analog of bloggers): http://www.magic-city-news.com/Editor_s_Desk_34/A_Climate_of... What of Mark Twain, Lewis Carroll, George Eliot, George Sand, Ellery Queen, Frank Dixon, and Carolyn Keene? A particular usage is among revolutionaries: Lenin, Stalin, Golda Neir, Moshe Dayan, Subcomandante Marcos, Carlos the Jackal. Or stage names: Madonna, Lady Gaga, Huey Louis, John Wayne, Marilyn Monroe, Bono, Cat Stevens, Yusuf Islam. You're making an extraordinary proposal. Support your position. |
Thanks to nradov above for info on HL7. Surely these major international orgs should already have been aware of it?