It’s your prerogative to believe there’s no such thing as human identity. Nevertheless, dozens of disciplines under the collective names of the humanities and social sciences have varying definitions of human identity that are weaved into their varying attempts to understand society, to understand our species, with some underlying hope that we might improve the conditions for human flourishing and the web of life of which we are part.

Digital identity has quite different history and purpose and is not in its current forms at least ready to substitute for human identity processes healthily. Nevertheless, it is now encroaching on those domains, leading to pure social outcomes. We need to (meta)design better.