Complexity in Identity, Part One: The Bifurcated Personal Identity

How do you prove who you are? The answer depends upon who is asking.

Suppose that we met in person for the very first time. Let’s suppose that you introduced yourself to me by telling me your name. And I replied, “Prove it.”

You would probably think I was a colossal jerk.

But not if I were wearing a uniform. In that case, it would be quite normal for me to demand proof of your identity. You wouldn’t think twice before handing over your ID card.

You see, we have two ways of proving our identity.

There’s the official way, which nearly always relies upon a statement from someone else, usually in the form of some kind of document issued by a government body or similar authority.

And there’s the unofficial way, whereby two people establish over a period of time a mutual understanding of each other’s personality, values and what they really stand for. This occurs gradually, during a series of personal interactions and exchanges. Instead of relying on a statement from someone else, you rely upon your own experience to establish the unofficial identity. This is a slow approach but it’s the one most of us rely on in our personal lives with most of the people we know.

In the official version, you are who “they” say you are. A third-party institution issues an authorized document that is intended to confirm certain facts about your existence. Your identity is what is on the card.

In the unofficial version, your actions speak louder than any words or documents. You can make whatever claims you want, but the other party is likely to reserve final judgement until they see that your deeds are in sync with your words (or not). In this unofficial identity system, your history of actions over time is more important than the simple facts of your birthplace or hair color.

There’s another distinction between the official system and the unofficial system. The former relies solely on objective facts that can be proven. The latter relies almost entirely upon personal anecdotal experience: it is subjective and it can be highly ambiguous.

So we have two ways of framing identity: a simple bureaucratic function that reduces a personality to a concise set of facts about attributes and dates, and a more personal process that unfolds like a narrative, filled with nuance and subject to interpretation.

This might seem like a pedantic way to start a series of articles about identity in the digital domain, but I feel like this distinction needs to be drawn quite clearly. In subsequent articles, when I write about product identity and digital identity, we will see this dualism and the resulting ambiguity play out in several ways.

The key point I am driving towards is that digital identity is highly problematic, and some of the reasons for that stem from our starting point, namely the dual nature of how we define personality in the real world.

In this series of articles, I intend to explore the similarities and parallels between personal identity, product identity and location identity, with the goal of gaining a better understanding of how product identity is evolving in the digital domain.

Later in this series of articles, I am going to test the argument that our means of establishing product identity is similar to the process for establishing personal identity, with a few key differences.

In this first article, I want to pay further attention to the “official” way of establishing your bona fides in the real world. If you are dealing with someone in a position of official authority, then almost certainly you are going to be obliged to show that person a document issued by a government authority that supports your claim.

You’ve done this every time you’ve shown your driver’s license to a cop, or your passport to an immigration officer in an airport. We respond reflexively without a moment’s thought or hesitation. “Here I am, and here’s the document to prove who I claim to be.”

What’s included on that document?

Your driver’s license contains a lot of information that is specific to you: your photograph, your signature, a brief description of distinguishing features of your physical appearance, including your gender, hair color, eye color, height, and weight. Most of this information can be confirmed at a glance by the person in authority.

Your license also contains some factual data about you, such as your birth date and home address. And it includes some government-issued qualifications such as the type of motor vehicle you are permitted to drive and an expiration date. Finally, the license is marked with an official seal, tamper proof coating, a bar code and a magnetic stripe, which increase the utility of the document and add credibility.

The driver’s license is designed to provide the person who is doing the verification just enough data points to determine quickly whether or not the bearer of the license is actually the person they say they are. Whether it is a traffic cop stopping you for a routine infraction or an lobby security guard checking the identity of visitors in an office building, the driver’s license is designed to make this easy and relatively certain. In other countries outside the USA, a state-issued identity card serves the same purpose.

You may be astonished to learn that more than one billion people on this planet do not have a form of identity card. Astonished because in modern society one can’t complete any significant transaction without proving one’s identity. Whether it is checking into a hotel or boarding a flight or picking up a package at FedEx, you are obliged to demonstrate that some government entity is willing to attest that the flesh-and-blood human being standing here really is, indeed, the person that they claim to be.

Generally, a driver’s license or state-issued ID card is sufficient once you are inside a nation. But to cross a national border requires a different document, typically a passport or residence card, which require a greater degree of scrutiny before they are issued.

For some routine transactions, however, like getting a mobile phone line or renting an apartment, you may need to go much further and show a credit report or a FICO credit rating score and some bank statements just to prove you are worthy of their service. The bigger the financial risk in the transaction, the more documentation you need to prove your identity as a qualified individual.

Sometimes even more verification is necessary. For instance, a prospective employer may retain private security firms to check your background before they commit to hiring a senior executive. This may sound very exotic and hard boiled in a Dashiell Hammet kind of way, but the reality is pretty mundane. The investigators are there to ferret out any gap between what the candidate presents and what the truth of his or her actions may reveal. In a way, this process is just a privatized and customized version of a verification service that the government bureaucracy provides for a relatively low cost.

For the biggest transactions, such as buying a co-op in New York City or taking out a college loan, you must reveal your most confidential financial records, including tax returns and bank statements. To get a visa to live or study in certain countries, you may need to provide even more than financial data: their immigration authorities may ask for your history of your residences, your police record in every city where you’ve lived, your employment history and even testimonials from other people who know you. Government background checks can span financial, educations, travel, relationships, family history and more. It’s all history.

We can already spot two constants in this official process: official identity is always dependent upon someone else’s testimony. In the identity field, this testimony is called “attestation.” On your driver’s license, the DMV attests to the claims you made about your birth date and eye color. The US passport agency attests to your citizenship.

Second, there’s no standard measure of identity. Different organization will define identity in different ways. In some cases, your identity is linked to your net worth and your economic status. In others it is your history of interactions with the police. And in other contexts, it might be your medical history or your educational history.

Notice that the deeper you go into someone’s identity, the deeper you are obliged to get into their history. Identity is what you are now… plus the sum total of all of your previous decisions, actions, reactions and lucky outcomes… and the consequences of those actions.

Deep identity is history. Later in this series of articles, I will explore why this concept of “identity as history” is bound to grow much more important in the digital domain in the very near future.

My next article will continue this theme of the bifurcated personal identity, focusing on the “unofficial” version of your personal identity.

Previous article in this series: Kevin’s Kelly’s Mirrorworld is Missing One Key Thing: Digital Identity

Next article in this series: Complexity in Identity, Part Two: The Unofficial Experiential Version of You

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Digital identity is complex stuff. I rely on advice from a network of experts to gain a better understanding. If the topics in this article interest you, then why not join me for a discussion in person? I will be the host and master-of-ceremonies for the Innovation Track of GS1 Connect, the biggest gathering of supply chain experts in the world.

I will be interviewing four of the world’s leading experts in digital identity on June 19. If you are interested in the evolution of identity in the digital domain, and blockchain for supply chain, business process automation, the application of artificial intelligence to manufacturing and retail, then this is a conversation you don’t want to miss. This year, GS1 Connect takes place in Denver Colorado on June 19 to 21. You can get early-bird pricing if you apply before April 15.

For 30 years, I’ve been focused on designing and launching new digital services. I supervised the launch of the world’s first mobile video services, some of the earliest PC games, online games and mobile games, and the biggest live online learning programs in the world. Today I serve as the Special Advisor for Digital Identity to GS1 US. GS1 is the global standards body for product identity.