Gunnar Peterson compiles some realizations by several people that there is no such thing as a unique identity, and people ought to get over that idea and think in terms of attributes. He concludes with:

Hunter S. Thompson said “buy the ticket, take the ride.” But don’t conflate yourself the ticket and the ride.

Openly IDentify your attributes with Open ID, 1 Raindrop, Gunnar Peterson, 15 March 2007

Don’t confuse the map for the territory; there may be multiple maps, and none of them completely describe the territory. Don’t confuse the sign with the signifier or the signified. Etc.

Information security needs to work itself forward historically from logical positivism at least to semiotics and postmodernism. Understanding what we don’t know and stopping pretending that there is such a thing as an absolute identifier would be good risk management.

-jsq