I think what you’re getting as it how engineers and technologists like to map emergent behaviors to some justifiable concept — suggesting that, merely because someone behaves a certain way justifies the development and creation of technology to further support that behavior, even if the behavior itself is a byproduct or accident of something else.

I think you betray your argument in your first two sentences! My whole point is that THERE IS benefit to going to the comic store — in that it affords me the chance to relate to a fellow human being, and to engage in a bit of commercial serendipity. Moreover, there is a certain physical joy in being able to peruse the shelves of a comic book store — with or without the intention to buy — with the purpose of just consuming the experience.

It’s not unlike going to a museum or window shopping — it’s not about productivity — unlike most technological innovation — it’s simply about engaging in an experience with no ulterior motive.

Now, you bring up the “citizen-centric web” and OpenID — and I see where you’re going. And maybe you’re right, and perhaps my assumptions and goals are wrong, or simply off-base. But I advocate for the concept and technology because I feel like the way the web — and web relationships — are structured today — are not scalable and are set up against the sanctity of the individual. I believe in the “citizen-centric web”, not just because we can build technology to support it, but because I’ve talked to folks who don’t understand, care about or build technology themselves, and they can relate to the issues that I seek to address with things like the DiSo Project.

Certainly there is a certainly “early adopter angst” which I don’t presume is shared among the general population, and I don’t mean to presume that the issues that we early adopters face are the issues that everyone faces. However, being on the leading edge of technology has shown me where limitations exist that could be overcome for the benefit of others — and not just because they are limitations and need to be surmounted! Instead, coming from the perspective of a designer, I see a lot of technology that is not the full realization of intent — but merely some stopgap measure to solve an immediate pain-point that ends up causing more long-term behavioral cramping.

So, I wouldn’t characterize OpenID’s utility as simply ameliorating the proliferation of passwords — but rather come to the problem as recognizing that collective identity doesn’t work for individualized transactions — and that we need some robust and reusable way to assert individuality in our digital transactions. The easiest and longest term solution to that problem, in my estimation, is to provide a means for expressing durable identity on the web, acknowledging that the only way such a solution will succeed is if it’s compatible with the web that we have, rather than the web that we want. That solution, so far, looks to me like OpenID.

Henry Petroski wrote “the essence of engineering is to construe every limiting aspect of existence as a remediable malfunction”. The problem? Most users of technology don’t see it that way, and this leads to solving problems that aren’t significant, because taking away a limitation — any limitation — is viewed as end in itself, regardless of whether removing the limitation makes a meaningful difference or what the costs of adopting the solution are.

This is what leads technologists to speculate about new ways of living that are enabled by new technology. If removing certain limitations isn’t currently meaningful or useful, perhaps there are new lifestyles for which they are. For example, now we can inundate our friends with our “stream”, so the idea of personal branding is invented to explain why this is important. Mobile computing creates the idea of digital nomads, etc. Is the same not true for “buyer-mediated commerce”? Or the “citizen-centric web”?

It’s not that these new lifestyles are pure fictions; they aren’t, but they are marginal, and will probably stay that way. But their existence is used in a deeply misleading way, as part of a narrative that claims that these are the early adopters, soon everyone will be doing this, etc. The problem is that this projects the engineering worldview as stated above on to ordinary people: that they aren’t digital nomads (or whatever) because of some limitation, but now that malfunction has been heroically swept away by technology, so now they will leap at the chance.

This is ultimately OpenID’s problem. It seems like the assumption is that simply removing the malfunction of having to log in to websites individually would translate to users’ adopting it.

A bit of a tangent, maybe, but there ya go!

@Todd: Exactly. Boxee is another good example where it emits an activity stream of your implicit and explicit behaviors concerning what you watch. Certainly loads of potential!

Love it!

The tweeting TiVo ( @TwiVo ) similar. The machine tweets its activities, your friends know what you are watching, very likely they’ll pay to watch the same thing because you gave it a thumbs up. Extrapolate to any connected device or machine and everyone wins – companies make more money, you get utility, friends get trustworthy recommendations.

I find this article to be coherent with “An Internet Watered Down”, a presentation by John Pettengill from Razorfish, that talks about why online business should not just create a “mobile version” of their sites, but should take advantage of mobile technology and carefully integrate their services into the while customer experience.

http://www.slideshare.net/johnep/an-internet-watered-down-or-how-to-save-the-mobile-web