I'm of mixed minds on this.
I'm actually really impressed with it as an idea. I work on a project that facilitates volunteer management, and we're currently looking at ways in which volunteer achievement can be acknowledged. We were planning to implement our own internal "badges" (achievements, awards, whatever) system, but it seems logical that we should consider supporting the Open Badges standard so that volunteers can show off their "volunteering portfolio" on other sites. "Hey look, this guy's done over 100 hours of community centre work!" Thanks for sharing.
np. That's one of the upsides I can see coming from this. I have long been trying to convince akkartik that we need to build whuffie, from Cory Doctorow's Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom. It's basically a real life karma/sentiment system that largely replaces currency. I see Open Badges as a step in this direction. IMHO one of the downsides of Capitalism is that it uses material wealth as a proxy for social value, when it often maps quite poorly. If we are going to move to a #postwork society, we need currency that can better proxy other types of value.