I’m beginning to have second thoughts.<\/p>\n
Plenty of people (myself included) got involved in internet identity because of its promise to put all of us as\u00c2\u00a0 individuals at the center of our interactions on-line. To empower individuals to define and offer and enforce their own terms in their interactions with others. To not merely be somebody’s user or consumer, but to be a first-class citizen of the net. To not be at the mercy of any government or organization.<\/p>\n
And from a merry band<\/a> of similar-minded individuals, the movement was born. The assumptions were:<\/p>\n While OpenID, the technology, still can support all of this, the thrust of the thinking of many of its larger supporters today goes into a different direction:<\/p>\n I know the argument that “if the user can see which attributes go over the wire, it’s user-centric.” Well, yes, perhaps, but in my view that’s user-centric in the same way a calorie-free chocolate cake is sweet. I ordered a real chocolate cake, though, please, where did it go?<\/p>\n Don’t get me wrong, there are good things about all of this, the most important of which is that the state of the art has driven substantially more adoption than it likely would have been in the less organized, decentralized, you-be-in-charge-of-your-own-destiny world.<\/p>\n But is the price of more adoption less user-centricity? Or is that just a phase we are going through?<\/p>\n\n
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