Submitted by Roland on Tue, 2005-12-20 13:05
More great stuff from Mike.
From --Mike--: Useful Abstractions.:
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There are some who have big problems with tags, because they're not specific enough, and they might overlap, and they tend to be a bit messy. What they do for us is allow us to categorize things for the task at hand. On Flickr, they help locate pictures of kittens, elsewhere they help categorize knowledge, websites, RSS feeds, etc. Tags are gritty and human, and just functional enough to get the job done. They serve as useful abstractions of the subject at hand.
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Submitted by Roland on Tue, 2005-12-20 13:02
Mike nails it. In the real world we don't have a personal relationship and id for every place we need id; we just give them something like a birth certificate or passport and they accept it! There's no reason why the online world should work that way, hence the need for digital identity.
From --Mike--: Useful Abstractions.:
QUOTE
When a person has only a handful of accounts, it is reasonable to assume they can manage them. With the growth of services on the internet, it's possible that users might need to have rights assigned to them on computers they don't even know about. It's time for another level of abstraction, which is what the identity folks are all talking about.
Indentity is how we want to abstract our relationships, because we shouldn't be tired to direct personal relationships with each and every server or service on the internet.
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