The 3 parts of identity in a dynamic world

At 3Box we live and breathe identity, and while GDPR and data abuses like Facebook’s may be concerning, they have also brought some welcome attention to the issues of digital privacy and data control. As we push ahead to a self-sovereign future, I wanted to share how I think of the 3 parts of identity in our increasingly digital, interwoven society.

1. Reducible identifier

Identity as a concept is difficult — even scholars in the field can’t agree on a definition. They do agree, though, that identity for each of us is not singular and static but rather plural and dynamic. Who we are changes over time and contexts. However, we as people and societies and institutions need something concrete to pick me out from the crowd of others, even others who may share my same name. In Seeing Like a State James Scott calls this ‘legibility.’ When we get past local communities and the Dunbar number, we need to make society understandable. We reduce things to lists and bits of information, and one of the must fundamental bits of information is who we are.

We need a legible, concrete, reducible identity. This leads to passports, social security numbers, and other root identifiers from the physical world. Much of the work in the identity industry is around verifying and authenticating who somebody is in this regard, whether through knowledge questions, facial or bio metric scan, or proof that they know a password or hold a private key.

2. Contextual identification

While reducible identification is critical to anyone trying to keep track of a group, it doesn’t actually tell us much about the person who has been identified. Context about that reducible identity gives orientation to who the person (or otherwise) actually is. Traditionally this may include where somebody lives (driver’s license), who their parents are, what tribe (including nationalities, teams, gangs, political affiliations, religion, etc) they are a part of, or who their employer is — anything you might fill out on a test or census form. More recently, this would include a person’s social graph (Facebook friends, LI contacts) and location data.

This may be static or dynamic information, but it’s not ephemeral — it roots them in time and space. As we move to a more digital-first world, and hopefully soon a self-sovereign world, we talk often of capturing this contextual information as ‘attestations’ or ‘verifiable claims’ to our root (reducible) identity, giving us a way to bring all the context about us together in a powerful, private, verifiable (trusted) way.

3. Dynamic identity

A reducible identifier and contextual identification provide a way to differentiate each other, to verify who somebody is and know some categorical details about them. But they do not tell you who somebody is. The richness of our identity is captured in the multitude of behaviors, preferences, relationships, interactions, histories and even thoughts. Only here can true identity — the plural, dynamic identity — be seen. One persons preferences and behaviors may contradict each other over time, and often do, so this cannot be captured in a reducible and ‘verifiable’ context. It is only captured when our goal is to understand who somebody is deeply, rather than pick them out from a crowd of others.

In today’s world, data reflecting who we are is being generated and captured constantly. With much of our lives online and in our phones, and sensors cheap enough to put on everything, nearly all our interactions with the external world can be turned into digital data. In fact, our internal ‘data’ — health, mood, biological patterns is now logged as well. This is infamously captured and monetized by Facebook and others, but it is also incredibly powerful. If put in control of users and creators of data, we can build a world that lets us use this rich data to truly understand the people around us far better than ever before, and as far more than bits of reducible and contextual information.

In fact, with rich, full identity data, we could understand our dynamic selves far better than previous identity construct have allowed us. In Homo Deus Yuval Harari envisions a breakdown of the singular ‘self’ into a multitude of biological signals and patterns and interactions, changing the very notion of identity — perhaps an indication of why this concept proves so hard to nail down.