I have spent large portions of my life in large cities where hiding in my car was more trouble than either walking or using public transportation. However, whether you walk or drive, such cities bombard you with more examples of stupid behavior than you can shake a stick at. I used to joke about this being the result of our government putting something in the water. Then I had my insight: It isn’t the water; it’s the population density! While I find something very satisfying about being able to manage a major metropolis on foot, there are a lot of people out there who experience (not necessarily consciously) a strongly dehumanizing effect from the crowds. The result is a growing feeling of insignificance, countered by a need to act out in ways that will assert the self against all those “others” out there. (In this respect I am a Spinozist: there cannot be a sense of self except as a negation of the sense of other.)

Let us now extrapolate “from the city to the Internet” (what a great title for a book). If the sense of self is besieged by walking up Van Ness Avenue, what happens to it in the cosmos of cyberspace or, for that matter, in specific “solar systems,” such as Second Life or the blogosphere? Think of your own musings about ranking:

http://confusedofcalcutta.com/2007/03/24/musing-about-rankings/

It is not to hard to imagine folks out there desperate to be something other than an insignificant (or nonexistent) blip on the Technorati rankings. If they get really obsessed over such things, who knows how they might lash out in an attempt to assert self? They might even start sending death threats to those who have elevated themselves beyond “blip status.” In that respect, then, my conclusion probably aligns very much with your own: Where the “social health” of cyberspace is concerned, it really IS all about Identity! It just happens to be about a particularly social aspect of identity that slipped through the cracks of the structure you were building!

I also want to refer you to a post I composed this morning:

http://therehearsalstudio.blogspot.com/2007/03/another-voice-of-reason-libby-purves.html

I “discovered” Libby Purves at TimesOnline; and her latest column deserves to be a voice in this conversation. I think her perspective is particularly important at a time when your feelings above government are being reinforced not only by that United Nations resolution cited in my last comment but also by a recent attack by The Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights against a rather unique approach to a crucifix statue:

http://therehearsalstudio.blogspot.com/2007/03/i-dont-care-if-it-rains-or-freezes.html

But authentication, and its consequent permissioning, is not enough.

Identity is richer than that.

Managing multiple personae is necessary but not sufficient, particularly in cyberspace.

I look forward to your criticisms.

What the Kathy Sierra incident reminded us, though, is that such identity management is a double-edged sword. It can just as easily be used for malicious intent as for furthering understanding, and I am not sure there is ANY aspect of identity that can be tethered in such a way to prevent such malicious intent. I have been worrying about this on my own blog over a recent attempt by the United Nations to make rulings over defamatory content:

http://therehearsalstudio.blogspot.com/2007/03/road-paved-with-good-intentions.html

So I shall be very interested in your next move in this particular language game!