An inquiry has come to me as to why I don't use my legal name and claim authorship of this blog. There were insinuations that I am somehow hiding immorally behind a veil of anonymity. Some find it especially odd, considering my interest in the philisophical aspects of identity. I'd like to respond to this, if I may.
First of all, 'Lord Carnifex' is very obviously a [i]nom de electrique[/i]. I aknowledge that. Some of my favorite authors have written under various psuedonyms, and doing so is considered a legitimate practice in the publishing industry. Since this blog is, for me, a form of self-publishing, I fail to see why I cannot take advantage of the practice.
Secondly, 'Lord Carnifex' is an online handle I've used very nearly since the inception of networked computing in the home. I've used the handle consistently. With a very few exceptions, a google-search of 'Lord Carnifex' returns items of my work online. Lord_Carnifex@yahoo.com reaches me, as does Lord.Carnifex@gmail.com. I'm cybersquatting on variations of Lord Carnifex at these and other webmail servers as well. I don't believe I'm hiding behind online anonymity, but exercising a coherent, complete online identity.
Third, I'm sure that we have all heard stories of individuals whose professional lives have been ruined or made complicated by careless remarks made by [i]or about[/i] them online. By keeping my real life and online names seperate, I prevent such unfortunate crossovers. I'm not afraid of those ideas and opinions I post here, but I don't exactly trust those in real life to understand what 'ideas and opinions' mean.
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Googlebombing for a cause: www.minnesotangos.org
Showing posts with label Identity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Identity. Show all posts
Friday, May 29, 2009
Monday, April 6, 2009
Breaking News
U.S. Federal government disbelieves that noted cyberpunk author Bruce Stirling is married properly. He and his wife Jasmine Tesanovic apparently haven't left enough of a paper trail. They do everything online. Here we have a case of an identity crisis: the biological and psychological identities involved are held to not correspond to the dead-tree informational ones.
It's also a demonstration that the glacially slow mechanisms of traditional government can't comprehend that modern, internet-based living doesn't need them or their antiquated concept of national borders and government approval of life choices. It's evidence also that the government doesn't understand the internet and the culture it has empowered enough to actually control or manage it intelligently. This should be a cautionary tale for any government beurecrat.
Let's all close our eyes, grab a Bruce Stirling book and repeat one of the cyberpunk mantras: "The future is portable, disposable, and transcends any sense of place."
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Googlebombing for a cause: www.minnesotangos.org
It's also a demonstration that the glacially slow mechanisms of traditional government can't comprehend that modern, internet-based living doesn't need them or their antiquated concept of national borders and government approval of life choices. It's evidence also that the government doesn't understand the internet and the culture it has empowered enough to actually control or manage it intelligently. This should be a cautionary tale for any government beurecrat.
Let's all close our eyes, grab a Bruce Stirling book and repeat one of the cyberpunk mantras: "The future is portable, disposable, and transcends any sense of place."
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Googlebombing for a cause: www.minnesotangos.org
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Exercises in Identity pt. 3: Identity crises
I define an identity crisis as an event in which some element of a person's identity is in doubt. The most general form of identity crisis occurs when one element of identity does not correspond to another element of identity - they do not identify the same person.
One example is the use of an identification card to obtain some restricted but desired substance or item. In some Western countries, especially the United States, access to alcohol or tobacco is restricted to those over a certain age. Usually, one's age is proved by presenting a form of government issued photo identification complete with date of birth. This process can lead to an identity crises in a number of ways.
One form of such crisis is misrepresentation. The person presenting the identification produces an ID that is valid in all ways, but not that of the person presenting. The intention is to decieve, usually by using an ID bearing a picture that is similar to the presenter's face - their biometric identity.
In this form of identity crises, the misrepresenter hopes that the examiner of the identity will believe that the misrepresnters biometric identity will be misunderstood to correspond to the document identity presented. Failing that, the misrepresenter hopes that fear of a false positive during the identity examination will deter attempts by the examiner to confront the misrepresenter.
When the identity examiner suspects misrepresentation, it is common then to resort to other means to confirm the identity. The examiner may ask the identity user to state their name, address, birth date or other trivia, whose correspondence to the data listed on the identification card will be confirmed. Such trivia are intended to represent a weak form of data-point identity, where an identification card user will be expected to produce these data unrehearsed. However, in actual practice, a misrepresenting identification user can be assumed to have rehearsed or memorised the data, causing such recitation to become instead a weak form of codestring identity, albeit involving a codestring that is known by more than two parties.
Oddly enough, one more significant form of resolving this form of identity crises is to involve law enforcement, in many cases deputies of the local county's sheriff's office. Strikingly, such law enforcement has few tools in their arsenal unavailable to the earlier ID examiner. While law enforcement may use a magnetic strip or RFID reader to obtain information stored electronically on the card, such information only asserts the validity of the printed information on the card. On site examination still cannot prove or disprove the correspondence of the present person's biometric identity with the photo presented on the identification. Theoretically, more precise means of biometric analysis could be called into play, probably by digitally scanning images into a computer programmed to analyse them. Such a process is only as good, however, as the accuracy of the process involved, which cannot be experimentally confirmed to be 100% accurate.
......
Another form of identity crisis occurs regularily at the radio network at which the present author is employed. The nature of such work involves daily communication with a number of radio hosts over various forms of audio telecommunications equipment, or via computer text internetworking media. There is in the network studio no corresponding video or visual means of communication. Therfore, the radio hosts must rely only on audio or textual media for identity cues. However, many of the network employees sound similar to the common human ear. Their nominal identies must be commonly reaffirmed once per day, so the show hosts know with which network board-op they are interacting.
One apparent solution would to be to rely on codestring identity; that is, to give each network board-op a unique inernetworking (Instant messenger, e-mail, or both) identity, with a unique codestring attached (a unique login and password). However, pragmatic demands of scheduling and intra-board-op communication often requires their collective use of such assets, and so such media do not uniquely correspond to an individual board-op.
One possible solution to this recurrent identity crisis would involve narrative or stylistic identity. Given enough samples with which to work, it is quite likely that unique features of narrative style and content might be discerned for each individual board-op, and so each board-op might be identified by their unique features. To date, I do not believe that the process has been completed.
......
It is a conceit of art critics and art historians that the works of many noted artworks may be identified by the hallmarks of the style of their creators. That is, a painting can be identified to be the work of a particular painter by examining the style of the work. This is a use of stylistic identity. Similarly, literary critics and analysts attempt to identify writing style when determining if a given work is by a known writer writing under a pen name. As well, a moderator for an online forum may attempt to discerne if a new poster may be an older poster working under a new screen name by analysing the style of anything written.
However, as the Fogg experiment demonstrates, actual use of stylistic identity to identify a unique individual is not necessarily accurate, and should be used with caution, even by acclaimed experts.
......
Nicholas Bourbaki
He was at one time hailed as a new polymath, producing excellent work in many fields of theoretical and applied mathematics, and publishing a number of journal articles. However, he was never seen to attend conferences or otherwise emerge into public. Many claimed (accurately) to correspond with him, but no one outside of a select few actually claimed to have met him.
Because Nicholas Bourbaki did not exist. He was the invention of a circle of French mathemeticians. Expressed in our terms of identity, Bourbaki enjoyed stylistic and narrative identity, as well as a nominal identity. He however lacked a biophysical identity, or a psychological identity outside of the conituity of memory of his "creators".
One example is the use of an identification card to obtain some restricted but desired substance or item. In some Western countries, especially the United States, access to alcohol or tobacco is restricted to those over a certain age. Usually, one's age is proved by presenting a form of government issued photo identification complete with date of birth. This process can lead to an identity crises in a number of ways.
One form of such crisis is misrepresentation. The person presenting the identification produces an ID that is valid in all ways, but not that of the person presenting. The intention is to decieve, usually by using an ID bearing a picture that is similar to the presenter's face - their biometric identity.
In this form of identity crises, the misrepresenter hopes that the examiner of the identity will believe that the misrepresnters biometric identity will be misunderstood to correspond to the document identity presented. Failing that, the misrepresenter hopes that fear of a false positive during the identity examination will deter attempts by the examiner to confront the misrepresenter.
When the identity examiner suspects misrepresentation, it is common then to resort to other means to confirm the identity. The examiner may ask the identity user to state their name, address, birth date or other trivia, whose correspondence to the data listed on the identification card will be confirmed. Such trivia are intended to represent a weak form of data-point identity, where an identification card user will be expected to produce these data unrehearsed. However, in actual practice, a misrepresenting identification user can be assumed to have rehearsed or memorised the data, causing such recitation to become instead a weak form of codestring identity, albeit involving a codestring that is known by more than two parties.
Oddly enough, one more significant form of resolving this form of identity crises is to involve law enforcement, in many cases deputies of the local county's sheriff's office. Strikingly, such law enforcement has few tools in their arsenal unavailable to the earlier ID examiner. While law enforcement may use a magnetic strip or RFID reader to obtain information stored electronically on the card, such information only asserts the validity of the printed information on the card. On site examination still cannot prove or disprove the correspondence of the present person's biometric identity with the photo presented on the identification. Theoretically, more precise means of biometric analysis could be called into play, probably by digitally scanning images into a computer programmed to analyse them. Such a process is only as good, however, as the accuracy of the process involved, which cannot be experimentally confirmed to be 100% accurate.
......
Another form of identity crisis occurs regularily at the radio network at which the present author is employed. The nature of such work involves daily communication with a number of radio hosts over various forms of audio telecommunications equipment, or via computer text internetworking media. There is in the network studio no corresponding video or visual means of communication. Therfore, the radio hosts must rely only on audio or textual media for identity cues. However, many of the network employees sound similar to the common human ear. Their nominal identies must be commonly reaffirmed once per day, so the show hosts know with which network board-op they are interacting.
One apparent solution would to be to rely on codestring identity; that is, to give each network board-op a unique inernetworking (Instant messenger, e-mail, or both) identity, with a unique codestring attached (a unique login and password). However, pragmatic demands of scheduling and intra-board-op communication often requires their collective use of such assets, and so such media do not uniquely correspond to an individual board-op.
One possible solution to this recurrent identity crisis would involve narrative or stylistic identity. Given enough samples with which to work, it is quite likely that unique features of narrative style and content might be discerned for each individual board-op, and so each board-op might be identified by their unique features. To date, I do not believe that the process has been completed.
......
"In 1962, the Fogg Museum of Harvard University arranged an unusual art exhibit, in which some of the paintings were fakes and most were genuine: "experts" were invited to come and pick out the fakes. Among those who authenticated at least one fake were the chairman of the Art Department at Princeton and the scretary of the Fogg itself. Most of the guests kept their opinions private, just making otes, but when the truth was revealed they 'quietly crumpled their papaers.' " [Wilson, Robert Anton; Everything is Under Control, HarperCollins books, 1998. ISBN 0-06-27317-2]
It is a conceit of art critics and art historians that the works of many noted artworks may be identified by the hallmarks of the style of their creators. That is, a painting can be identified to be the work of a particular painter by examining the style of the work. This is a use of stylistic identity. Similarly, literary critics and analysts attempt to identify writing style when determining if a given work is by a known writer writing under a pen name. As well, a moderator for an online forum may attempt to discerne if a new poster may be an older poster working under a new screen name by analysing the style of anything written.
However, as the Fogg experiment demonstrates, actual use of stylistic identity to identify a unique individual is not necessarily accurate, and should be used with caution, even by acclaimed experts.
......
Nicholas Bourbaki
He was at one time hailed as a new polymath, producing excellent work in many fields of theoretical and applied mathematics, and publishing a number of journal articles. However, he was never seen to attend conferences or otherwise emerge into public. Many claimed (accurately) to correspond with him, but no one outside of a select few actually claimed to have met him.
Because Nicholas Bourbaki did not exist. He was the invention of a circle of French mathemeticians. Expressed in our terms of identity, Bourbaki enjoyed stylistic and narrative identity, as well as a nominal identity. He however lacked a biophysical identity, or a psychological identity outside of the conituity of memory of his "creators".
Thursday, January 8, 2009
Exercises in Identity pt.2: machine entities
The taxonomy of identity currently under discussion can be freely extended to non-human machine entities: computers, software agents, and automatons. While such machine entities do not to date enjoy what we might accept as sapience, their participation in the elements of identity can be easily described.
Although such machine entities do not fall under what might be readily described as biological life, they do have physical, material extension. Let us call these Hardware identity. Many machine entities can be described in terms of Physical-hardware: they are made up of collection of components assembled into a single chassis. At their creation, they are comprised of a single set of physical components. Over the course of their existence, components may be removed and others added. However, such additions and subtractions are made to a collective whole that continues as a single set of components over a certain lifetime. This is a form of unique identity.
At the moment, machines do not enjoy any sort of unique code or specification. So the concept of genetic identity does not seem to apply as it does in biological entities.
Most mass-produced hardware is more or less indistinguishable on its exterior, so biometric identity doesn't normally apply. However, it is not unheard of for individual users to customise their external appearance; this could be interpreted as a form of what we might call physiometric identity.
Modern computers frequently write down certain of their internal states onto permanent digital media. This allows them to, in a certain sense, have a continuity of memory. Indeed, it is possible to remove the physical memory of one computer (it's hard drive or similar) and place it into a different computer. This allows a kind of transference of identity as the continuity of memory preserves a form of psychological identity across a change of hardware-physical identity.
Modern machine entities have never been known to show what might be proved to be sentience or an individual ego identity. Indeed, possession of a singular ego identity may be a sufficient condition for sentience in a human-style intelligence.
Informational identity is in many ways the most significant element of machine identity, as informational identity as a realm has been developed for the convienence of machines. Any machine connected to a computer network has one or more network addresses, Machine Access Codes, Universal Resource Locations, and so on. These are all forms of network identity although in many cases they are assigned to the machine identity from outside, and are can be highly variable. Many machine implementations in exisistence have encoded encryption keys that they require to identify themselves in order to access certain resources. This is a form of codestring identity.
Social identity is a complex issue when applied to machines. Some machines are named, and so can be said to have a nominal identity - I myself am writing on a machine named 'gcn-traffic' - although this is often (but not always) tied into the machines network addressing and thus its network identity. Individual computers and other machine entities are frequently not creative or communicative in a social, human sense. They do not particpate clearly in stylistic or narrative identity. Although if individual machines experience non-uniform quirks in their operation, such that the identity of an individual machine can be determined from its output (as perhaps in the case of an inject printer with a misdirected jet), then they might be said to participate in a form of stylistic identity.
Datapoint identity for machines is largely indistinguishable from codestring identity. The distinction here is that codestring identity for machines exists in specific memory adresses within the machine, places that are queried specifically in order to access those codestrings. Datapoint identity would exist if an external machine quieried an address not reserved for a specific codestring to verify a machine's specific identity; a practice that to my knowledge is uncommon.
Document identity is also underdeveloped for machine entities, although would include warranty cards or repair contracts.
Although such machine entities do not fall under what might be readily described as biological life, they do have physical, material extension. Let us call these Hardware identity. Many machine entities can be described in terms of Physical-hardware: they are made up of collection of components assembled into a single chassis. At their creation, they are comprised of a single set of physical components. Over the course of their existence, components may be removed and others added. However, such additions and subtractions are made to a collective whole that continues as a single set of components over a certain lifetime. This is a form of unique identity.
At the moment, machines do not enjoy any sort of unique code or specification. So the concept of genetic identity does not seem to apply as it does in biological entities.
Most mass-produced hardware is more or less indistinguishable on its exterior, so biometric identity doesn't normally apply. However, it is not unheard of for individual users to customise their external appearance; this could be interpreted as a form of what we might call physiometric identity.
Modern computers frequently write down certain of their internal states onto permanent digital media. This allows them to, in a certain sense, have a continuity of memory. Indeed, it is possible to remove the physical memory of one computer (it's hard drive or similar) and place it into a different computer. This allows a kind of transference of identity as the continuity of memory preserves a form of psychological identity across a change of hardware-physical identity.
Modern machine entities have never been known to show what might be proved to be sentience or an individual ego identity. Indeed, possession of a singular ego identity may be a sufficient condition for sentience in a human-style intelligence.
Informational identity is in many ways the most significant element of machine identity, as informational identity as a realm has been developed for the convienence of machines. Any machine connected to a computer network has one or more network addresses, Machine Access Codes, Universal Resource Locations, and so on. These are all forms of network identity although in many cases they are assigned to the machine identity from outside, and are can be highly variable. Many machine implementations in exisistence have encoded encryption keys that they require to identify themselves in order to access certain resources. This is a form of codestring identity.
Social identity is a complex issue when applied to machines. Some machines are named, and so can be said to have a nominal identity - I myself am writing on a machine named 'gcn-traffic' - although this is often (but not always) tied into the machines network addressing and thus its network identity. Individual computers and other machine entities are frequently not creative or communicative in a social, human sense. They do not particpate clearly in stylistic or narrative identity. Although if individual machines experience non-uniform quirks in their operation, such that the identity of an individual machine can be determined from its output (as perhaps in the case of an inject printer with a misdirected jet), then they might be said to participate in a form of stylistic identity.
Datapoint identity for machines is largely indistinguishable from codestring identity. The distinction here is that codestring identity for machines exists in specific memory adresses within the machine, places that are queried specifically in order to access those codestrings. Datapoint identity would exist if an external machine quieried an address not reserved for a specific codestring to verify a machine's specific identity; a practice that to my knowledge is uncommon.
Document identity is also underdeveloped for machine entities, although would include warranty cards or repair contracts.
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Exercises in Identity pt.1
So, now that various terms of identity have been identified, how are they to be used? One use is in the critical analysis of speculative fiction. A number of examples exist of what may be termed identity crises - situations where manipulation of various forms of identity ensure that specific identities don't match in a traditional human way. Spoilers follow.
1) William Gibson's Mona Lisa Overdrive. One primary character is Angela Mitchell. She is a simstim (simulated stimuli) star and a noted celebrity. She enjoys a consistent identity structure throughout most of the book. The central plot involves a conspiracy to abduct her.
Another primary character is that of Mona Lisa. She is SINless - lacking a government issued Single Identification Number. She lacks a document identity. This is a latent identity crisis in itself. Lacking such a SIN, Mona is unable to assert her identity before any government agencies; she is effectively a non person to such agencies, and her disappearance will not be noted or followed up on.
Mona also superficially resembles Angie, a resemblance that is compounded when a cosmetic surgeon specifically reshapes Mona's appearance to Angie's. This is a crisis of bio-metric identity: two persons who share one bio-metric identity although the sharing is not perfect; Mona's fingerprints are not Angie's, and in fact Mona takes comfort from the fact that upon close inspection and familiarity, Mona's hands do not resemble Angie's.
At the conclusion of the book, Angie has been abducted, brought to the same location as Mona, and has died. The corporation that Angie had worked for succeeds in rescuing Mona and recovering Angie. A representative of that organization chooses to accept Mona as a stand in for the deceased Angie. As the book ends, Mona has replaced Angie in the role of Angela Mitchell's identity.
Mona thus retains psychological identity: she identifies herself as a unique ego, with continuity of memory as Mona. Bio-physical and genetic identity are maintained for Mona - she still exists in the physical body she has always inhabited, with its own unique genetic code. Bio-metric identity is split - superficially Mona now owns Angie's face and other biometric recognition cues, and presumably SenseNet the corporation has erased all of Angie's other bio-metric files and replaced them with Mona's.
Mona has assumed Angie's social identity traits. Mona now owns all of Angie's possessions, and has document (and presumably code-string) identifies as Angela Mitchell. However, one character indicates that Mona differs in stylistic identity from Angie, such that an aware or critically trained observer can detect a difference.
2) William Gibson's Idoru. The idoru, Rei-Tomei is a Nipponese pop starlet, without physical form. Using the terms of identity, she lacks a bio-physical and genetic identity, not owning a consistent physical form. She does enjoy geographic identity, given that there exist any number of holographic projection devices with which she can appear to manifest a physical existence. She does, however, have a unique bio-metric identity. Through doctored photographs and video media, she possesses a unique appearance.
As she has a name, Rei Tomei owns a very weak form of social identity. Presumably, she also maintains a consistent stylistic identity, as all of her musical endeavors are constructed by other people with the intent of maintaining a consistent style. As a corporate person, I presume she owns various codestring identities that the corporation uses to establish her bank records and so on.
Left ambiguous in the book is if she enjoys a single ego-identification. Written and electronic records might be used to maintain a continuity of memory, as well as the individual memories of the persons who create and operate her corporate identity.
3) Steve Jackson's Games GURPS and Transhuman Space. In the universe of both these works, it is heavily implied that personality, sapience, and intelligence (both 'natural' and artificial) are connected to software, rather than hardware. In that universe, it is technologically and metaphysically possible for a personality to change physical bodies through the appropriate techniques.
Such a transference allows a change of bio-physical (and presumably genetic) identity. Depending on how the physical form is constructed, bio-metric identity may or may not change - a personality moving from one artificially constructed body into another with the same bio-metric features will enjoy a consistent bio-metric identity.
Social identity in such a context becomes very ambiguous. Various forms of social identity that are tied to biological identity become fairly meaningless. The only strong consistent measures of social and informational identity become data-point and codestring identifies. Presumably, a single ego-identification would wish to keep these forms of identity unique onto itself, and these forms of identity would have to form the basis of other forms of social identity.
1) William Gibson's Mona Lisa Overdrive. One primary character is Angela Mitchell. She is a simstim (simulated stimuli) star and a noted celebrity. She enjoys a consistent identity structure throughout most of the book. The central plot involves a conspiracy to abduct her.
Another primary character is that of Mona Lisa. She is SINless - lacking a government issued Single Identification Number. She lacks a document identity. This is a latent identity crisis in itself. Lacking such a SIN, Mona is unable to assert her identity before any government agencies; she is effectively a non person to such agencies, and her disappearance will not be noted or followed up on.
Mona also superficially resembles Angie, a resemblance that is compounded when a cosmetic surgeon specifically reshapes Mona's appearance to Angie's. This is a crisis of bio-metric identity: two persons who share one bio-metric identity although the sharing is not perfect; Mona's fingerprints are not Angie's, and in fact Mona takes comfort from the fact that upon close inspection and familiarity, Mona's hands do not resemble Angie's.
At the conclusion of the book, Angie has been abducted, brought to the same location as Mona, and has died. The corporation that Angie had worked for succeeds in rescuing Mona and recovering Angie. A representative of that organization chooses to accept Mona as a stand in for the deceased Angie. As the book ends, Mona has replaced Angie in the role of Angela Mitchell's identity.
Mona thus retains psychological identity: she identifies herself as a unique ego, with continuity of memory as Mona. Bio-physical and genetic identity are maintained for Mona - she still exists in the physical body she has always inhabited, with its own unique genetic code. Bio-metric identity is split - superficially Mona now owns Angie's face and other biometric recognition cues, and presumably SenseNet the corporation has erased all of Angie's other bio-metric files and replaced them with Mona's.
Mona has assumed Angie's social identity traits. Mona now owns all of Angie's possessions, and has document (and presumably code-string) identifies as Angela Mitchell. However, one character indicates that Mona differs in stylistic identity from Angie, such that an aware or critically trained observer can detect a difference.
2) William Gibson's Idoru. The idoru, Rei-Tomei is a Nipponese pop starlet, without physical form. Using the terms of identity, she lacks a bio-physical and genetic identity, not owning a consistent physical form. She does enjoy geographic identity, given that there exist any number of holographic projection devices with which she can appear to manifest a physical existence. She does, however, have a unique bio-metric identity. Through doctored photographs and video media, she possesses a unique appearance.
As she has a name, Rei Tomei owns a very weak form of social identity. Presumably, she also maintains a consistent stylistic identity, as all of her musical endeavors are constructed by other people with the intent of maintaining a consistent style. As a corporate person, I presume she owns various codestring identities that the corporation uses to establish her bank records and so on.
Left ambiguous in the book is if she enjoys a single ego-identification. Written and electronic records might be used to maintain a continuity of memory, as well as the individual memories of the persons who create and operate her corporate identity.
3) Steve Jackson's Games GURPS and Transhuman Space. In the universe of both these works, it is heavily implied that personality, sapience, and intelligence (both 'natural' and artificial) are connected to software, rather than hardware. In that universe, it is technologically and metaphysically possible for a personality to change physical bodies through the appropriate techniques.
Such a transference allows a change of bio-physical (and presumably genetic) identity. Depending on how the physical form is constructed, bio-metric identity may or may not change - a personality moving from one artificially constructed body into another with the same bio-metric features will enjoy a consistent bio-metric identity.
Social identity in such a context becomes very ambiguous. Various forms of social identity that are tied to biological identity become fairly meaningless. The only strong consistent measures of social and informational identity become data-point and codestring identifies. Presumably, a single ego-identification would wish to keep these forms of identity unique onto itself, and these forms of identity would have to form the basis of other forms of social identity.
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
Elements of Identity
So, I've discussed the ideas I've been tossing around about personal identity. Thus far I've gone through and defined the terms I want to use, and how (in my mind) I've categorised the different forms of personal identity. Mainly, they come down to four major categories, with subcategories underneath them. In some cases, I'm not sure if I'm confident about the definitions - I think I may be thinking about the same thing from two different directions...
Biological identity: the biological and physical self - the body and its aspects that are the source of one's own physical identity. The body exists before everything else.
Bio-physical identity: The continuity of body tissue back from the origin of the identity. Cells are created, shed, and die, but there remains a continuity: the new cells are attached to tissues that have their origin at the origin of the biological identity.
Genetic identity: the more-or-less unique genetic code that (to an approximation) every cell in a single body carries.
Bio-metric identity: the compiled aspects of the physical structure or function of the body that are believed to be fixed and unique to each individual: retinal patterns, fingerprints, voice-prints, handwriting. Facial recognition is a low-resolution form of bio-metric identification.
Geographical identity: the identity inherent to having a physical location within a 4th dimensional co-ordinate system.
Psychological identity: that which defines the individual mind as a unique object.
Ego identification: the individual ego's perception of itself as a defined individual. The perception that the ego is itself and not another.
Continuity of memory: the individual mind's recollection of being a unique identity back to the origin of the identity itself. The memory of having been or creating other forms of identity.
Social identity: the perception of the self by others as a unique individual. One's social identity allows others to determine that the identity is that person and not another.
Textual identity: the content of one's utterances and texts. Especially those ideas, beliefs, opinions, and other expressions that allows one to be identified as an individual.
Stylistic identity: related to textual identity. The body of stylistic features to one identity's language use, artistic expression, body language, or mode of interaction that defines the self as an individual.
Data-point identity: related to continuity of memory and codestring identity, data-point identity is the collection of personal and abstract facts that a person is expected to know as a unique individual. This differs from codestring identity in that each data point may be brought out in an identity challenge in an unpredictable fashion. It is related, somewhat, to continuity of memory.
Document identity: one's unique identity as defined by the documents issued by a social authority: passport, birth certificate, work/school I.D., and so on.
Ownership identity: having ownership of a set of physical objects and claim to a given set of geographical spaces as one's own.
Nominal identity: having a single, individual name.
Informational identity: the form of identity that accrues to having a presence within the manifold defined as the contemporary digital realm.
Codestring identity: those series of alpha-numeric strings that identify oneself within various communication systems: telephone numbers, e-mail addresses, account logins and passwords, financial account numbers, etc.
Network geography: one's more-or-less unique location within the digital information manifold: one's current I.P. address, cell-phone access point, etc. Somewhat related to geographical identity, but not necessarily congruent.
Biological identity: the biological and physical self - the body and its aspects that are the source of one's own physical identity. The body exists before everything else.
Bio-physical identity: The continuity of body tissue back from the origin of the identity. Cells are created, shed, and die, but there remains a continuity: the new cells are attached to tissues that have their origin at the origin of the biological identity.
Genetic identity: the more-or-less unique genetic code that (to an approximation) every cell in a single body carries.
Bio-metric identity: the compiled aspects of the physical structure or function of the body that are believed to be fixed and unique to each individual: retinal patterns, fingerprints, voice-prints, handwriting. Facial recognition is a low-resolution form of bio-metric identification.
Geographical identity: the identity inherent to having a physical location within a 4th dimensional co-ordinate system.
Psychological identity: that which defines the individual mind as a unique object.
Ego identification: the individual ego's perception of itself as a defined individual. The perception that the ego is itself and not another.
Continuity of memory: the individual mind's recollection of being a unique identity back to the origin of the identity itself. The memory of having been or creating other forms of identity.
Social identity: the perception of the self by others as a unique individual. One's social identity allows others to determine that the identity is that person and not another.
Textual identity: the content of one's utterances and texts. Especially those ideas, beliefs, opinions, and other expressions that allows one to be identified as an individual.
Stylistic identity: related to textual identity. The body of stylistic features to one identity's language use, artistic expression, body language, or mode of interaction that defines the self as an individual.
Data-point identity: related to continuity of memory and codestring identity, data-point identity is the collection of personal and abstract facts that a person is expected to know as a unique individual. This differs from codestring identity in that each data point may be brought out in an identity challenge in an unpredictable fashion. It is related, somewhat, to continuity of memory.
Document identity: one's unique identity as defined by the documents issued by a social authority: passport, birth certificate, work/school I.D., and so on.
Ownership identity: having ownership of a set of physical objects and claim to a given set of geographical spaces as one's own.
Nominal identity: having a single, individual name.
Informational identity: the form of identity that accrues to having a presence within the manifold defined as the contemporary digital realm.
Codestring identity: those series of alpha-numeric strings that identify oneself within various communication systems: telephone numbers, e-mail addresses, account logins and passwords, financial account numbers, etc.
Network geography: one's more-or-less unique location within the digital information manifold: one's current I.P. address, cell-phone access point, etc. Somewhat related to geographical identity, but not necessarily congruent.
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