Self-Sovereign Identity — the book, the dystopia

Philip Sheldrake argues that the innovations created in the name of self-sovereign identity (SSI) need not produce the dystopia their SSI form promises, and that SSI's conception has a fundamental flaw: it analyzes one aspect of a complex system without the systems thinking needed for the wider context. The article is a dissenting chapter in the Manning book "Self-Sovereign Identity: Decentralized digital identity and verifiable credentials," co-edited by Alex Preukschat and Drummond Reed, which has 24 chapters, 5 appendices and 11 online-only chapters. Sheldrake writes that SSI goals interfere with psychological, sociological and ecological health, and he calls for multidisciplinary participatory inquiry.