Juggling Contextual Identities

I ran across a social network blog by a Forrester analyst. This entry on the future of social networks is worth reading.

However, I suspect that a key need (not really addressed by the author (Charlene Li)) is the ability to nimbly juggle the intersection of multiple identities and contexts.

In everyday interactions (both local and remote) we constantly tailor our identity to match the context. This kind of thing can literally change from second to second when we're juggling multiple contexts.

The real power of being hyperconnected will not really emerge until we have a robust identity infrastructure that can be nimbly governed by a subject. That probably means things like (a) the ability to create & manage multiple identities simultaneously, (b) a certain amount of automated governance (e.g., dynamic activation & enforcement of boundaries/attractors), and(c) a certain amount of just-in-time "operator-on-the-loop" predictive modeling.

We're a long way from anything like that...especially given that there seems to be a lack of understanding of the importance of the dynamic management of multiple contextual identities.