Whoami, a question for ubicomp systems

Neal Stephenson on the Unix command, whoami:

If your machine is on the Internet, you can log onto other computers, provided you have a user name and a password. At that point the distant machine becomes no different in practice from the one right in front of you. These changes in identity and location can easily become nested inside each other, many layers deep, even if you aren’t doing anything nefarious. Once you have forgotten who and where you are, the whoami command is indispensable. (from In the Beginning was the Command Line)

Wouldn’t that be a pretty important thing for everyware systems, too?

As you wander around through the internet of things, triggering sensors, becoming part of networks, interacting with various things at different levels of engagement I think it would be pretty important to be able to ask “who do I appear to be to the systems with which I am currently interacting”. In otherwords, whoami. You ask *nix whoami to locate yourself in network-space and to find out, and remember, what you can and can’t do.

The more I think about it, the more important being able to ask an everyware system that question seems to be.