The Future of Identity
This week I attended a forum hosted by the Victorian Registry of Births, Death and Marriages, who “want to reshape their service offering around the “identity” needs of citizens today” as part of their Design BDM strategy. The forum consisted for about half a dozen lightning talks, looking at identity from a variety of angles, and a range of community-design data-capture methods (Twitter, whiteboard, note-papers, vox populi). Here are my tweets form the event:
At HUB Melbourne for an interesting talk on the #FutureOfID.
Births, Death & Marriages want to reshape its service offering around the “identity” needs of citizens today. #FutureOfID ?/ How do you describe yourself (once you remove the usual suspects - name place job faith sex footyteam )? #futureofid
Primitive to modern then postmodern? Time is not quite to scale. #FutureOfID / Is there any authoritative & comprehensive “history of identity”? #FutureOfID
“Race is the ultimate myth” #ShinenYoung #futureofID <I agree. I often get the “where are you from” question as well.
Being comfortable with who you are is more important than how society categorizes you @theokitchener #futureofid
Here is Chris Poole’s (m00t’s) talk on anonymity/identity an the web. https://medium.com/o-0-prismatically/5d1abd30ef2 … #futureofID / “Google/Facebook would have you believe that you’re a mirror, but in fact, we’re more like diamonds. Identity is prismatic” m00t #FutureOfID / It is a concept I’m exploring in my blog . o O (Prismatically…) https://medium.com/o-0-prismatically … #PrismaticSelf #futureofid
With multiple, ever-changing, online and offline identities, the BDM has a challenging future ahead! #futureofID / “Work against the tenancy of the net to promote anonymity” ??? What? RUBBISH!! #futureofID / I want the government to have as little to do with my identity (online and off) as possible. #futureofid / What data is BDM holding about me now? Births, Deaths, Marriages… anything else? Why give them more information about us? #futureofID / Who do records of identity serve? What ‘social’ activities are (currently) dependent on authoritative ID records? If I give my information a bank, gov.department, company, ngo, marketers or Google, that shouldn’t involve BDM. #futureofid / eg.National Electronic Health Records already records our health events from womb to tomb. #futureofID / BDM is not the custodian of our identity, we are. Better they just manage the information they need and are capable of handling. #futureofid / I’m still not convinced that my identity is the responsibility of BDM. I manage (or delegate) my information as I desire. #futureofID
Would the first step to 21st century identity be easily “editable records”? Can BDM even consider that as an option? #futureofID
The #futureofid talks got me thinking about why Marriage is even in the BDM mix. Legacy of an archaic ideal?
I actually surprised myself with the strength of my opposition, especially when the discussion looked at clamping down on online anonymity.
The tweet I made about the gap between Primitive and Modern/Postmodern is very apt, because the modern idea of identity was not born on cave walls or in the democratic polis. It was an invention of the Holy Roman Empire, and entrenched in Medieval Era when the Catholic Church used the Seven Holy Sacraments and other mechanisms to track and maintain their congregations (in order to ensure passage to heaven).
The concept of registering Births, Deaths and Marriage is an irrevocably Judeo-Christian one.While it’s true that the rise of the nation-state meant that governments were better equipped to collect this information, and have done so for the last 160, we now see that their grip on our personal information is waning. As the YahMicroFaceGoogle’s increase their function in identity management Governments and Supra-Government Agencies are still fighting to stay in the game, as shown with the FutureID program being designed by the European Union.
In the future world of the Prismatic Self, ubiquitous data capture is to be assumed, like traffic lights and immunisation. What I am trying to explore with this blog is whether these captures of our information encroach on our sense of self or extend it - as the innate sensation to the individual is the same. At a fundamental level that question rests on our ability control that information, and how that data benefits us (as individual, or as a community).
If we are to ask what data is requires to construe our identity, we must know what conception of self provides the most meaning by which to live.
