Identity is big.  Too big.  And unnecessary for the most part.  IMHO, there is no technology on earth at this time that will assure someone else that I am who I am with absolute certainly.  So what is all this clamoring about identity?

Who needs to know my home address?  No one except a handful of delivery companies like Fedex.  Does Amazon needs to know where I live?  No.  Does my bank need to know?  No.

Who needs to know my email address?  No one.  They don't need my email address.  What they need is a way to send me a message.  An anonymous mailbox will do in 99% of the applications.

Who needs to know what my real name is?  Heck, I've been using my Americanized first name, Don, for all of my life in America, 28 years, instead of the name I was born with.  Only time I had to use my real name was at the DMV and at the airport lately.  My real name is DO-PIL.  In most situations, real names are unnecessary.

So what else remains in the identity basket?  Not much.  Certainly  not enough to warrant calling it identity in the sense most people seems to be thinking.  You want to know when I was born?  You want to know what my mother's maiden name is?  Why r u scrapping my skin cells to solve your problems?

Let's face it.  The online world is not screaming for identity services.  We are.  By we, I mean developers, entrepreneurs, marketeers, and reporters.  Control over identity mean nothing to the users.  It's control they are not even aware they need to have.  Giving users full control over their identity amounts to giving them full control over new chores they have to do.

User don't want control.  They don't want identity.  They just don't care.  What they do care about is all the forms they have to fill out, forms which offers zero benefits to them.  Trolls are what they are.

What about online businesses?  Do they really want all that customer info?  What they really want is money.   To get the money, they want to sell things to the users.  Somehow, that translates to pulling teeth from users.

Hogwash.  Forget identity.  Focus on the problems that seemingly calls for identity.  The ball is on the first base still folks.