What It Takes To Have A Real Name

There's a short editorial in The New York Times today about Amazon's Real Names program, by which reviewers are encouraged to attach their "real-world identity" to the scathing critiques and effusive endorsements they write of books and other random junk you can buy online. (Wow, some of these people put a lot of effort into being rated amongst Amazon's Top Reviewers!) The whole "real name" thing's a reaction to last February's accidental revelation that authors were favorably reviewing their own books and mercilessly slamming their enemies'. Amazon's come up with a pretty cool system for the establishment of reputation in the community of that online marketplace -- ranking products and affiliate vendors in addition to reviewers. (Others have too, of course: Epinions, eBay....) But the NYT editorial (offhandedly) makes an good point about the connection of modern identity to credit cards, purchasing power, and purchase history. (You need to have a credit card registered with Amazon.com or a "reasonable purchase history" to get a real name.) We already use credit cards to establish our reputations in purchase transactions -- our trustworthiness as paying customers. So it's really no surprise that -- in the marketplace -- our reputations as individuals with trustworthy opinions might be tied to that same system of credentials. Maybe the public libraries should institute a parallel system for those folks who might have helpful critiques of books they didn't buy.