What’s in a name?
It’s a simple question – what’s in a name? Or, let’s put it even simpler – What is YOUR name?
In the normal, real-life world in which we live in, this seems to be quite a simple answer. My name is Derek O’Harrow. Amongst my circle of friends, colleagues and acquaintances, this is me – they know who I am, where I’m from, and anything else I’ve shared with them on very-much a one-to-one basis (or anything that Facebook has chosen to share with them without my knowledge).
In the virtual, world-wide, ever expanding world of the internet it’s not such a simple question.
Let’s take the rather extreme example of John Smith. Not a specific John Smith, but your average John Smith (apologies to all John Smiths for calling you average!).
If I declare on the internet that I’m John Smith, then who am I? Or rather, how do you know which of the potentially thousands or hundreds of thousands of John Smiths around the world am I? Am I John D. Smith from Coventry, UK, or John B. Smith from Connecticut, USA, or J Smith from Australia, or John Smith from Jamaica? If you Google John Smith, do you find your friend, long-lost relative, or work colleague or, more likely, do you find a host of companies based on said name?
To add to the confusion and turmoil, I, Derek O’Harrow, have multiple personalities and identities. No, I’m not a paranoid schizophrenic with multiple personality disorder. Like most I have multiple roles in life – my home life, my work life (past, present and future) and my internet life. All of these are me, or elements of me, but each has it’s own identity and with each identity typically comes a set of resources, applications, and services to which we need access.
Our presence and our identity on the internet is becoming ever more important. If you are applying for a job, the chances are that your potential employer will Google your name, or look you up on Facebook – are they finding the correct person? And even if they happen too (which is often unlikely), do you want them to know that information about you?
The internet is very much like a public diary – there is a very real chance that everything you do on the internet will be visible at some point in the future, and information rarely goes away. Those Facebook pictures of your 18th birthday party involving far too many beers and a goat will come back to haunt you one day – believe me!
Our identity is going to be absolutely key going forward – far more so than today, and on a scale that most of us cannot even comprehend. And our ability to manage and protect that identity will be equally important. The convergence of home, internet, Cloud and business computing will, over time, necessitate identity convergence.
So, back to who am I?
On twitter, I’m @derekoharrow. On Facebook I’m facebook.com/derekoharrow. On the world-wide web, I’m www.derekoharrow.com. Fortunately for me, I have quite an uncommon name (just Google me), so I’m lucky and tend to have my pick of usernames and domain names, but what about our friend John?
John may be @jsmith31 on Twitter. On Facebook he may be stuck with facebook.com/smittyj, and as for domain names – I doubt there’s any reasonable combination of John and Smith that can be used to create a sensible domain name –let’s face it – all sensible domain names are already taken anyway!
And this is the situation with only 3 different sources of identity – what happens when more and more services appear and take hold world-wide (or should that be web-wide)? What will be the next Twitter? The next Facebook? How many different usernames and formats will we have to each fight for, own, and protect going forward?
We’ve already reached the point when any geek worth their salt will not even consider naming a child until they’ve checked that the domain name is available, and the appropriate Twitter name reserved. It’s also very common nowadays for popular stars and celebrities to be impersonated online, with often no real way of telling if they are who they claim to be.
Just how many different logins do we have for different services? Why do I need a different login to each and every bank, building society, social network site, web application, entertainment, travel and insurance site? How do we secure all of these identities, while at the same time making them easier to manage and control and avoid using the same password everywhere, or writing them all down on a piece of paper? Password managers are now commonplace among the tech-savvy as our use of online services and different identities expand exponentially.
To further complicate the matter, the internet super-powers are staging a war over our identities. Google have Google Connect; Twitter have just announced @anywhere and OAuth, and Facebook have Facebook Connect. There’s also OpenID, which is about as useful and meaningful to the average John Smith as a cuttle-fish in custard. All of these are designed to make our lives better, simpler and improve our online experience by offering a form of single-sign-on. They are also a means of grabbing and controlling our online identities – a very very valuable commodity for the internet super-powers!
So, what are we to do?
Well, we could all resort to the Web 2.0 band-wagon and give-up on standard names and identities. We can start using Web 2.0 names and brands as our identity. I could change my name from Derek O’Harrow to wobb.ly and John Smith could change his to qwer.ty? Even then, there will only be so many possible combinations. And, to be perfectly honest, I rather like my name as it is!
We could create a new global format and mechanism for identity that is commonly adopted, easy to use, secure, federated, with open API’s that can integrate with the Facebooks and Googles of the world. An OpenID on steroids, but without the quirky nomenclature. The challenge with this is how to make every individuals identity unique and yet personal to them?
We could also look to our governments to help, by providing a means of validating our identities – an “Internet Passport” so to speak – to prove that I am indeed Derek O’Harrow, a citizen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Island, and not to be confused with any other Derek O’Harrow either in the UK or abroad. Whether the governments of the world are ready for this responsibility remains to be seen – no doubt this would, of course, be privatised and responsibility given to private businesses to implement.
One thing for sure – we cannot just stand still and let the situation continue to expand into chaos. Innovation, standardisation and possibly even regulation on a world-wide basis will be required to stem the identity flow.
Of course, this is all a very tall ask, so if anyone has any ideas???
EDIT: Lifehacker have just published a related article worth reading – Establish and Maintain your Identity Online.
Filed under: The Internet
