The next generation of Identity

Timothy Grayson blogged about how the vocabulary being used in discussing digital identity may be holding us back. In The Digital Person, Solove makes a similar point about how metaphors can lead to inaccurate beliefs. A glance over the Slashdot conversation about Kim Cameron’s Seven Laws and many people say they want anonymity, but there seem to be different ideas of what anonymity is.

Great writers can conjure up a scene with a few words that capture the reader’s imagination and cause an emotional response. The meaning behind the term “Big Brother” was changed forever by “1984″. In the Identity discussion, we will need to be careful in our choice of vocabulary so that the desired meaning is conveyed.