Phil Windley writes about Barbie dolls with embedded keys for Barbie-based social networking, and the obvious (for people with kids ...) dynamics of technology adoption that will play out.

Sounds like good ol' PGP key signing parties were simply going after the wrong audience for mass-market success ... ;-)

(More seriously, there are several lessons in here somewhere ...)

I hereby do notify the world that I shall not join any form of online service that has any of the following features:

• Requires me to work out who my friends are.
• Asks me to approve you as a friend before we can communicate.
• Sends me an email to tell me someone didn’t send me an email.
• Wants me to register before I can contribute.
• Wants me to write a constant narrative of my life just in case someone unspecified wants to read it.
• Expects me to manually give my availability or location for any reason.
• Endorses products to others based using my name.

Coming next:

• Any non-commercial site that doesn’t use OpenID and wants me to create yet another username and password. (And you can guess which qualifier I’ll be dropping after that.)

Yes, my Facebook account is closed. (And if you invite me to join a Facebook group, I won’t.)

link

We have come a long way if people can make statements like that. Take note, while Martin is an alpha-thinker, many will follow him before too long.