Thanks to Eric Norlin for pointing out a thought-provoking article by David Talbot, who reports about David Clark of MIT proposing to “rethink the Internet’s basic architecture, to potentially start over with a fresh design” to cope with issues like “lack of built-in security.”

Talbot states, ” … for the average user, the Internet these days all too often resembles New York’s Times Square in the 1980s. It was exciting and vibrant, but you made sure to keep your head down, lest you be offered drugs, robbed, or harangued by the insane. Times Square has been cleaned up, but the Internet keeps getting worse, both at the user’s level, and — in the view of Clark and others — deep within its architecture.”

Whether a complete re-think or less agressive add-on fix is needed, I think the graphic representation of Clark’s “four goals for a new Internet architecture” aptly summarizes the key issues which must be addressed. It appears that Identity Management would be a key enabler for reaching these goals.

Tags: Identity
Digital Identity
Identity Management
Internet
DavidClark
InformationSecurity