Identity Trends: Possible Futures

Kaliya Hamlin has posted a very interesting presentation "The Future of the Convergence of Internet-scale Identity Systems" from a recent workshop at Digital Identity World. It shows the most important outcomes of a a scenario planning exercise organized by the Identity Commons Working Group on Future Trends. They tried to look into the future a bit further than the next takeover by Oracle or the next interconnectivity demonstration between OpenID and XYZ. It really makes you think.

Some bits from the presentation as a teaser:

Anonymity in even indoor “public” places (coffee shops) has been destroyed by cheap and portable face recognition tools.

Government-issued becomes meaningless as millions of fake ids circulate - illegal immigrants driver forgery market.

DNA on Dating sites prevents potentially bad genetic matches before you start dating.

Networks of Trusted Individuals Compete with Corporations as Players in Identity Dependent Transactions.

Keep in mind that they only speak about a "range of possible futures", so if you don't like any of these, try to create a different one. As Alan Kay said: "The best way to predict the future is to invent it."

Here are many more potential future scenarios and more info on the full process they used.