How do we know who’s who on the Internet? And why it may be the most important question we face.
The Escapist, February 28, 2006

Boston, the Harvard Faculty Club, a snowy morning in February. About 30 technologists, encryption experts, academics and corporate execs, plus a handful of journalists, sit facing each other around a long horseshoe arrangement of tables. The assembled luminaries include leading developers from IBM, Microsoft and Mozilla, not to mention former FCC commissioner Reed Hundt; Esther Dyson, the founding chair of ICANN; Marc Rotenburg, president of EPIC, the Electronic Privacy Information Center; and Doc Searls, editor of Linux Journal and an author of the Cluetrain Manifesto.

It’s cold outside, but the faculty club has laid out coffee and pastries for breakfast. It’s a good thing, too, since it’s going to be a long two days here, talking out the issues, approaches and possible solutions to the problem of how we create identities on the internet and, once created, how we keep them safe. Phishing, stalking, secure desktops, one-way hashes, World of Warcraft and the Department of Homeland Security will all come up over the next 48 hours. It’s pretty obvious nothing’s actually going to be solved in this room, but it’s an impressive collection of talent nonetheless. What does it have to do with the future of online games and virtual worlds? Quite possibly, everything.

Read the complete text at The Escapist.