Identity Terminology Part 1: Identities
We would like to share our excitement about modern identity technologies with you, but before we get to that, let us agree on what we mean by some of the basic terms usually thrown around in identity-related discussions.
Entity
An entity is a being. It can be thought of as a unit of existence. An entity could be a tangible thing, an intangible thing, or a person. Anything you can think of as a distinct item of some kind is an entity. Your phone is an entity. The United Nations is an entity. Your neighbour Mrs Lovelace is an entity.
Context
A context is an environment with some discrete boundaries. It houses entities, within which entities exist and interact. A hospital is a context within which patients, physicians, nurses, and other supporting personnel exist and interact. A pub is a context within which pubgoers and bartenders exist and interact. Facebook is a context within which Facebook users exist and interact.
Attribute
An attribute is a property of an entity. For a person, their age is an attribute. For a company, its financial status is an attribute. For your house, the fact that it is owned by you is an attribute.
Attributes may be assigned. Your national identifier is an attribute assigned by the government. The fact that Mrs Lovelace is the current head of your department at work is an attribute determined by the company.
Attributes may be inherent, which is the opposite of being assigned. Your height is an attribute intrinsic to your body. Your date of birth is an attribute intrinsic to your life history. The fact that your business is a limited company is an attribute intrinsic to its structural nature.
Attributes may be accumulated. Your health records constitute an attribute in the form of a collection of your heart rates, blood cholesterol levels, diseases, and whatever has happened to your body over time.
Identity
Now we are ready to talk about the most important word in this article. An identity is a context-specific representation of an entity in the form of a set of attributes.
One obvious example is your identity. To your circle of school friends (context), you are known by your name, your physical appearances, your personality, and so on (attributes). To another circle of friends in a different city on the opposite hemisphere (a different context), you may be known by a different name, different physical appearances (because they can change, even considerably), a different personality, and so on.
That is, an entity may be represented by different identities in different contexts.
An entity may also be represented by multiple identities in a single context. Think of Facebook for example. You may have multiple accounts as a means of portraying different personas.
It is also possible that multiple entities are represented by the same identity. One obvious case is an impersonation.
Now What?
How is an identity conveyed? We shall find out in Part 2.
