My work brings me back to this Sidney Harris cartoon over and over.
Most recently it came to mind while I was listening to the Dec 31, 2004 Gillmor Gang (a rewarding listen for those curious about digital identity). The gang collectively expressed what I believe will be one of the key themes for digital identity in 2005 - conflict between solutions designed for enterprise identity and those for personal identity. Dave Winer pressed Kim Cameron about his laws and the role Microsoft will play in providing identity as an internet service. In his laws Kim goes further than any other enterprise identity architect I know of towards accomodating the privacy and complexity concerns that are top of mind in the personal identity space - and still he had to deflect doubts and suspicion (ironic that in a discussion regarding identity, Kim faced a lack of trust in his point of view because he works for Microsoft). The gang landed at an agreement that a global meta system for identity that is pluggable for personal and enterprise identity technology alike is the best path forward and that's definitely a "then a miracle occurs" moment. Until that step (rolling out a broadly accepted meta system) is made more explict we solution providers are stuck in the interim. In my day to day conversations with those looking for enterprise solutions, I am arguing that "discrete, yet extensible" is the best philosophy. In other words, break off a closed set of goals or concerns that can be addressed with some combination of SAML, Liberty, strong auth, LDAP, etc. and take pains to deploy an architecture that can be extended when the time comes.
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