Finally following up to a blog entry by John Beatty regarding a conversation he and I had back in June at Planetwork. I believe that John unintentionally mis-represented my comments when he wrote:

Fen also doesn't really believe in the single, universal super-identifier that is being used in the e-names elevator pitch.

What I had said in our conversation was that I'm not a huge believer in the value of global e-names [sic] as the value of the network will be at the edges, and local i-names (the name we're now using for these identifiers) will have as much or more value. E.g., I think it is more important that the people in my @idcommons*iname-hackers*bay-area*sunday-hikers community can know me as, simply, "fen" than someone I don't know in some sub-community in China can reach me by typing in my global identifier "=fen".

That said, I do think in the short term global i-names will be useful (as the infrastructure to handle searching and easy local community formation is not yet in place) and in the longer term, the vanity factor will be significant. Fact is, I plan to buy global i-names for my wife and son as I want the choice - and I know a good deal when I see it.