The Identity Metasystem is the ecology in which Windows
CardSpace is designed to thrive. Gaining a solid understanding
of the model is the best way to learn how to take advantage of
this new technology.
AWorld Without a Center 89
A World Without a Center
The fabric that keeps the Internet together is fairly simple from a
technical standpoint. You saw in the preceding chapter how the
content-publishing infrastructure (browser plus web server plus
HyperText Transfer Protocol [HTTP]) proved ?¬‚exible enough to
be twisted in the wide gamut of online applications we see today.
You have also seen that security concerns, speci?¬?cally
about identity, are a serious seatback for the activities involving
high-value transactions. The technology for addressing those
concerns, or at least signi?¬?cantly mitigating them, already exists.
We took the time to understand strengths and inadequacies of
the main authentication schemes, and it??™s clear that cryptography
and token-based schemas have the potential to provide a
technical solution to the problem. In fact, for the most part, the
problem is not technical at all.
The reality is that the Internet is just an enabling infrastructure.
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