On 08/21/2014 11:37 AM, Joseph Bonneau wrote: > This may be the missed vertex of > Zooko's triangle: without centralized policing of claimed names, it may > be impossible for people to get any of the human-memorable names they > want. Or at least annoyingly expensive.
This point could be more profound than we realize. I think there is a deep social-psychology to online identifiers that we don't fully understand. There is really interesting sociological research into how parents give names to their children and what types of status signifiers they are subconsciously trying to communicate with names. Names are very personal, but also deeply constrained by cultural norms around taste, and also incredibly important for what type of self you are trying to project. If there is anything that sociology can agree on in the last hundred years it is that there is no such thing as "personal taste". No one likes opera just because they like opera. I have noticed that I tend to dislike online services where I am not able to claim a user identifier that I like. Obviously, this does not deter many people (hence the [email protected] phenomenon), but I think everyone cares deeply about their online presentation of self (whether or not they are even aware that they care). If nothing else, the many layered hierarchies of the DNS system have afforded more opportunities for identifiers that we identify with. -elijah _______________________________________________ Messaging mailing list [email protected] https://moderncrypto.org/mailman/listinfo/messaging
