Re: [GNU/consensus] [SocialSwarm-D] Zooko's Triangle

[Nick Jennings]

On Thu, Jul 25, 2013 at 7:34 PM, Melvin Carvalho <address@hidden> wrote:

On 25 July 2013 19:19, Klaus Wuestefeld <address@hidden> wrote:

People wont authenticate multiple facets, will they?

Sure they will, at the moment we have a world split between http profiles and email addresses.  http is more popular, largely due to facebook, but there's other systems such as tent, indieweb, foaf etc.  email is pushed hard by google, microsoft, yahoo and friends. 

I think this is painting with a wide brush and bending reality a bit. It seems people most against email addresses tend to do this thing where they compare it to http. It comparing apples to oranges.

There is no "split" between HTTP profiles and email addresses. An email address is a target to send a message to. A profile is a display of information. They serve different purposes and they do not compete.

Email is not "pushed hard" by anyone, at least to my knowledge. It's like saying mailboxes are being pushed. If you don't want a mailbox, you don't have to have one, you won't get any mail though.

 

If you had to choose 1 of the two http is superior imho because you can derefernce http to find more information, you cant dereference email easily.  Additionally, a normal user can create a profile page, but running an email server is normally an enterprise level task.

Creating a profile page is not akin to running a mail server. That's simply ridiculous. You could compare running a web-server to running a mail server. Both of which require sysadmin skills to do correctly.

 

Strangely, it seems to be a religious war for the last 5 years, and I have no idea why.  It has slowed us down, and unnecessary. 

I agree, I think it's misrepresentation that rubs some people the wrong way. I'm in no way involved in this 'religious war' but I do find it absurd when people make sweeping statements about how email and HTTP are somehow competing for user identity, and that email is obsolete.
 

The point here is that it does not have to be either/or, it can be AND.  You can imagine other facets in future being added such as telephone, key, name, fingerprint, qr code or whatever.

+1
 

As it happens, authentication is rare, and normally happens as a one-off.  After that an unguessable string is normally shared between parties (eg in a cookie) to mean you dont have to authenticate again.  People often login today by clicking a button.  If your public key is in your client, you just need to click and not type or remember anything.

Authentication and identity are different concepts which are commonly grouped together.  It's rare that people look up other people by email when adding a friend, they will use the real name, and this is also displayed on your wall etc. 

Facebook and all other major social networks have a "find your friends - import your contacts list" to search for people you may know via their email address. Again, you seem to be trying to underplay the importance of email, by extreme generalization of very isolated use-cases, to make a point.