I dunno, I'm in the Twitter @bluesky conversation, and the more I see the alternative proposals for scalable global-human-population identity schemes, the more I think telephone numbers aren't a terrible model. Adequately memorable, easy to scribble on a cocktail napkin, satisfactory as a unique key in your own personal contacts application whatever it may be, and sufficiently boring as to not provoke a land-grab rush. Yes, some numbers are cooler than others, but it's less intense an issue than having to be timb4857292@ rather than timbray@ because you arrived later on the scene.
On Wed, Dec 29, 2021 at 12:25 PM John Levine <johnl@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
It appears that Keith Moore <moore@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> said:
>Not sure what you mean about HAM radio operators. But I do have the
>sense that people keep trying to make something that is fundamentally
>unworkable - globally unique names that scale to the world's population
>that people actually want to use.
Well, we do have phone numbers which are unique, largely meaningless,
and we all at least used to be able to remember a fair number of them.
I'm not sure they're all that useful as a model, though.
