The Problem With Identity
The problem with identity
Identity represents not only our relationship with technology but also how we choose to present ourselves to others, and how data about us is managed. With complexity coming from all sides, how will we cope?
Introduction
At its heart, identity is a simple enough idea. It should be possible to create a way of representing someone that is sufficiently unique and hard to replicate that it can be used for the purpose needed – linkage to data, access to services, proof of affiliation or whatever.
From this relatively straightforward staring point things very quickly get complex however. In this short paper we look at the background and drivers to identity today, and what can be done to keep on top.
Identity used to be so simple… didn’t it?
The identity challenge has largely emerged from the information age. Prior to the arrival of computers, managing the relationships between people, data and services was manageable enough – passports, medical records, census forms, birth, marriage and death certificates, accounts and company records filled the space allocated to them.
While the joint notions of ‘paperwork’ and ‘bureaucracy’ (literally, desk-based processes) suggest that the quantities of material could occasionally become overwhelming, the ability to link people with records was not seen as a particular challenge. Trust was more easily granted, for example with a letter of introduction, a seal or a signature, and despite the occasional abuse the system functioned well enough. As far as we know.
The information age spawned three challenges. First, it became necessary to authorise access to computer resources, for example through the allocation of username/password combinations. Which in itself, doesn’t sound like an insurmountable challenge: here’s an application, here’s your details, off you go.
Indeed, in the old days, people were often allocated roles which dictated what they could and couldn’t do, and given interfaces to suit – such as ‘Data Entry Clerk’. As mere, subservient slaves to the machine, such roles left people little scope for anything other than being part of the data production line.1
As computers and applications increased in scope and size, it became necessary to give people access to multiple systems – which created a raft of new problems. Single Sign On (SSO) was the term used to describe the desired goal – the ability to type one set of user credentials, and auto-magically gain access to all applications and data required.
Terminologically, SSO begat Identity Management, reflecting a recognition that both credentials and roles needed to be configured, updated, maintained. Bill Smith the Policeman needed to be treated very different from Bill Smith the social club treasurer. But still, as long as the challenge was about centrally managed computer systems, it remained surmountable.
The Internet threw a spanner in the works
Of course, we all know where things have ended up. Access to online systems (originally along the lines of bulletin boards) required people to keep tabs on their own usernames and passwords, a situation which grew exponentially when the wave of e-commerce, then the interactive web hit.
Today, people will have tens, if not hundreds of usernames and passwords. We’re seeing a continued path – more and more complex, as we try to manage multiple logins for work applications, online software and services, social sites, banking and phone PIN numbers… we have created for ourselves an impossible goal as nobody apart from Derren Brown could hope to remember every single one.
Governments are also reviewing notions of identity
The second dimension of identity is about. linking individuals with data.
The ability to link individuals to data is also a factor
Second, increasingly complex electronic records needed to be linked to the people with the minimum of error.
And third, more recently, we have seen the emergence of identity footprints.
We have each created for ourselves a drawer full of keys, without any real knowledge of what opens what door.
To resolve this we can talk about identity management… but the other side of the coin is that identity is being created for each and every one of us whether we like it or not.
But identity also emerging from how people using technology
That part still remains. But since Web 2.0, we are seeing people use technology as direct interaction tool, not just an asynchronous transport mechanism.
While such behaviours continue, an upsurge of individual behaviours are also taking place. The read-write Web and its successor, social networking have both enabled people to be far more interactive.
The relationship between people and technology is changing.
Which brings new questions about identity.
What about privacy.
And the two are overlapping.
As illustrated by the ability to log in with Facebook.
This is more than an innocuous facility, as it provides facebook with access to a broader set of interactions.
But it is also indicative of how we can take a certain persona and start to associate ourselves with it.
There exist challenges of fragmentation – it has become almost impossible to remember who said what to whom, where.. But also, of personality. It is harder and harder to present multiple images depending on where you are.
Every new person you add to Twitter has the ability to change what you might say.
When the pope tweets, are we seeing the real person? Unlikely.
Technology threatens to have a better grasp of who we are than we do ourselves.
And yet, the tools we have remain no more helpful than a transport, mere pipes. Even Facebook.
The idea of Sentiment analysis remains a tool for the advertisers and data miners, and not for the people who are using the tools.
What started as a simple mechanism to ensure only pre-defined people could access software applications and services has
They are better able to extract, reflect personality
And then to make decisions about it.
We are ending up with a sentient cloud – which can make decisions based on an understanding of people.
How to counter? If at all?
The right to anonymity. As captured by The Onion and illustrated by Facebook’s recent ‘win’ in German courts.
The right to be forgotten.
Perhaps it is not a problem but the discrepancy remains. For many these tools represent an identity crisis of the first order.
Where the various attempts to ‘do’ identity have failed, then, is in thinking that the key in some way represents the house.
Identity pervades everything we do and say online, just as offline.
The problem with identity, then, may ultimately be in deciding who we are.
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In a way this reflects the ill-fated Stanford Prison Experiment in 1971. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment. ↩