Module: Communauts virtuelles, Agents intelligents C1: Identity

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Module Communautés virtuelles,Agents
intelligentsC1 Identity Identity issues
KM-Master Course, 2004
Thierry NABETH
INSEAD CALT The Centre for Advanced Learning
Technologies, Fontainebleau, France
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Defining The Identity Concept

• What is the Identity concept?
• Where is it used?
• Why it is important (what are the issues)?
• How to manage Identity?
• Identity in virtual communities?

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What is Identity
Identity has to do with the characteristics of
the individual, and what makes it unique or on
the contrary similar with the others. Identity
can be defined from an internal perpective, or in
the perspective of its interaction with the
environment.
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Where is Identity used

• Identity intervenes all the time in people life
• When people travel
• In the personal life
• Family life
• Social life
• Health
• Work
• Business
• Shopping

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Identity of Alice, Marit Hansen, ICPP
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Identity a variety of perspectives

• Technical
• The Digital Id, the Id tools
• Legal
• Freedom (of expression), liability
• Security (police, etc.)
• Id Thief, controlling access,
• Philosophy
• the Human being and the society
• Biology
• The Human as a living entity (DNA, )

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Identity a variety of perspectives (cont.)

• Psychology
• Who I am? (behaviours, personal life)
• Sociology
• Who are they? (groups relationships)
• Organisation, business
• Position, affiliation, reputation
• Marketing
• The abstract identity (profiling, datamining)
• Commerce
• The customer (transaction)

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Some Concept

• Partial identity
• Self identity
• True, assign and abstracted identity

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Partial Identities used in Contexts

• Several partial identities (activated in context)
• Need to isolate these partial identities

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The self identity concept

• The I
• The indeterminate first person perspective
• The implicit Me
• The potentially representable identity
• The explicit Me
• The identity managed by digital infrastructures

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The self identity concept. Issues

• Acknowledging and addressing the Imperfection of
  representation
• Right to correct
• The question of Control
• By the individual
• By trusted third parties
• By external parties (companies exploiting this
  information)

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True, Assign and abstracted Identity

• The personal Identity (inner and timeless)
• Exists all the time.
• The corporate Identity
• Attached to a particular context only
• The abstracted identity
• No attached to an individual (profiling)

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True, Assign and abstracted Identity, Issues

• Temporality
• To be strongly protected
• Conditionality
• To be detachable from the Individual
• The abstracted identity
• Abstract, but real consequences for people. (to
  set some boundaries of what can be done).

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Managing identity

• The technical approach
• Lets create some tools
• The legal approach
• Lets legislate (forbid or allow)
• Security
• Lets control (procedures)
• Pedagogy
• Lets educate (how to behave)

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Identity in the Internet Age

• Identity in new pure digital territories
• Virtual community systems, MMORPG, electronic
  market place, collaborative e-learning platforms,
  blogs, wikis,
• Digitalisation of real territories
• Enhanced reality (mixing real/digital),
  ubiquitous communication, RFID, Cyborgnetic,
  blended learning
• Crime frauds
• Spying, phishing, money laundering, etc.

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the eIdentity, Whats new?

• Many Identity concepts issues existed before
  the advent of the Information Society (ISoc)
• Id fraud, democracy, etc.
• But the ISoc has magnified their importance
• Possibility to record everything (technically and
  economically)
• Possibility to analyse this information
  (profiling)
• Possibility to do massive personalisation
• New usages
• Profiling / Personalisation, support for social
  networks, geographically informed systems,
• Extreme mobility

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Identity Virtual communities

• Variety of ways to define ones identity
• Web page, Blogs, reputation systems (ebay),
  socialware, dating systems,
• Variety of ways this identity is misused
• What about spamming, spying, privacy issues etc.?
• Managing this identity
• Identification (anonymity, pseudonyme, etc.)
• Observability, encryption, etc.

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Identity in Domains

• healthcare
• the management of medical information. This
  information should not be disclosed outside the
  medical or the private sphere.
• personal life
• hobbits, family composition, sexual orientation,
  ...
• work
• job title and position, competence, professional
  experience, etc.
• education
• diploma (in which institution), interest,
  grades, etc...