I think this article conflates too many different notions of identity together (which tbf, is because the bitcoin people the article is criticizing do the same thing).
Identity is one of those concepts that has a lot of parts to it, and you can do the individual parts sanely, but if you try to do everything all at once, its crazy.
As a example, my ssh key is an identity system. It works great in some contexts. Would i want my social insurance number attached to it? Obviously not, that is crazy. That doesn't mean ssh keys are bad.
Personally, I think it's a good summary of the kinds of identity problems being tackled in the Blockchain space. However, the alarmist tone makes the author seem quite dismissive of interesting technological advances that can be used to securely store data publicly.
We are obviously going to be sharing more data in the future and these projects are discovering how this can be achieved. Blanketing the entire movement as dystopian is unhelpful.
The "dismissive" tone is not because we believe that technology advancement is impossible.
It is because we have been hearing for over a decade about how crypto is going to deliver massive value "in the future".
There is only so much time people will be willing to listen to vague promises of future innovation before they take a look at the actual technology of today and realize that most if not all of it is of little value other than gambling.
My advice to anyone that actually wants to make real products or advancements in identity would be to avoid crypto. Build the product on top of a generic store layer. It will be obvious to anyone with software expertise that Blockchain could be interested in that storage layer of the product would benefit from it.
Identity is one of those concepts that has a lot of parts to it, and you can do the individual parts sanely, but if you try to do everything all at once, its crazy.
As a example, my ssh key is an identity system. It works great in some contexts. Would i want my social insurance number attached to it? Obviously not, that is crazy. That doesn't mean ssh keys are bad.