An Identity Problem — Part 4
Defining Digital Identity — Context is King
This is part of a series of articles on digital identity. For those catching up you may want to start with part 1.
As described in part 3 our identity can been seen as data that belongs to us. It is highly variable and falls into buckets of inherited (fixed), accumulated (built over time) and assigned (attached by relationships) information.
However the value in identity is not simply information. What is really useful is the trust it provides. Consider the following definition [2]:
“Identity is the correlation of information into social and contextual trust.”
The key point of this definition is that the presentation of our identity information correlates into a resulting trust. Furthermore the trust is contextual based on the mode, or persona, in which we present our identity information.
The persona concept is the interesting bit. We are naturally adept at using various hats or personas as we present ourselves in everyday life. We are also quite accustomed to switching rapidly between personas as different circumstances present themselves.
Consider the following diagram that describes this phenomenon.
Who I Am
The “Who I Am” represents our complete set of identity information. Simply put, in effect it is the first part of the definition of identity that was covered in a previous post.
Who I Present to Be
The “Who I Present to Be” represents the personas we exhibit based on a given context using our identity information.
We have personas for just about everything.
As a parent, as a child, as a partner, as an employee, as a coach, as a team member, as a member of the community. Our sports, recreation activities, hobbies also bring out our own unique personas. We have particular personas reserved for circles of friends or even just towards certain individuals.
Personas can be tailored based on the type of day you’ve just had or even down to minute on the current activity such as writing a white paper. I can think of people who have quite particular personas behind the wheel of a car, and in quite surprising ways.
Personas are very natural to us and we practice our repertoire without effort as we switch between them. While we might kiss our family before leaving home for work, less so to our colleagues before we leave work at the end of the day. And our colleagues’ are fine with that too. There are very definite lines in behaviors between our personas. We all expect and understand that the persona you are presenting right now is filtered on current context. We all socially expect us to be using the right persona for the right situation as well. To fail to apply the right filter can have major social consequences. Best to get it right.
Context is king with identity and personas.
How I Am Seen
Our personas are tools we use to conduct ourselves to the world as it plays out around us. Personas are useful to control how we are seen and trusted.
Personas are our trust tools. Their effectiveness is measured by the level of trust and reputation we have built based on our contextual behaviour.
Do we always want to have high levels of trust in our personas? Mostly, but not always. Certainly with close friends, family and professionally we do. When we are dealing with things that deeply matter to us.
Occasionally we might not want to use a persona that has a high level of trust. We may wish to a deal with a party we are not sure that we trust ourselves yet. We may want to act light-hearted or provide humorous comments. A stand-up comic has a stage persona. We laugh, but we don’t have to trust absolutely everything they might say. After all it’s just one, albeit hilarious, perspective.
This is important for a digital context. We don’t have one persona in the physical world, so why should we have only one in the digital world?
When we present our persona to a government for citizenship purposes or a bank for financial purposes we present a persona that is engineered for high levels of trust. We talk about identity assurance levels and the like.
When we present our persona to Snapchat or Instagram it’s different. We may present our digital selves it a more light hearted way, or put a spin on how we want to be seen in that circle. When we present our persona to access an un-trusted web site, joke-gadgets4cheap.com, it’s absolutely different. If a low trust e-commerce site asks for your government trust level identity information we should balk and walk away. That’s a confusing and untrust worthy experience in which to use our precious identity information.
In summary personas aim to control the “How I Am Seen” aspect. This is around the concept of trust which is measured by the amount of reputation and respect we have built based on our contextual behaviour.
Finally, and interestingly, there is feedback loop back from “How I Am Seen” back into our core identity information — “Who I Am”.
For example if we build a foundation of reputation and respect in a sporting discipline, this tends to feed back into our own identity as who they are as ‘sports person.’ Professional sports people’s identity is usually heavily invested in their reputation — how they are seen. Say ‘greatest boxer of all time’ and most of us will identify the same person, purely based on the level of reputation they held.
Another example. A good customer for an airline (“how they are seen”) has more frequent flier points (identity data or “who I am”) and therefore is entitled to exhibit the persona of a frequent traveler and their entitled rewards.
There are numerous examples how our identity and personas circle around the loop. If we balance our identity and personas well these can refine our identity upwards in an improving spiral for how we are seen and trusted . Equally we treat our identity and personas badly it can result in a diminishing downwards spiral for our trust.
