Self-sovereign identity isn't new. It's just a new term. People having been carrying credentials around to prove who they are for thousands of years. When we entered the digital age, something weird happened. Our digital credentials became locked up inside databases owned by corporations and governments. We couldn't get at them, and instead had to get by with vastly inferior usernames and passwords.
Compared with physical passports, driving licenses or even business cards, today's digital identity is stupid. Constrained in silos, riven with fraud, and a user experience nightmare. In a perfect world, we'd carry our own superpowered digital credentials with us, and be able to use them wherever we want privately and securely. In this talk Andrew describes what is being done to make this perfect world a reality.
