Around the World : An Identity Series

Around the world, around the world. Surely you've heard the Daft Punk song, now follow the reference...

One humans, many identities. We upload pieces of ourselves online everyday... We create sub identities, aliases, each time leaving behind and around the world something little pieces of us...

What is Identity?

To be honest everyone in the identity space will roll their eyes, or maybe disengage when a presentation starts like this. And so do I…but as I travel around the world, and learn so much, I believe there is still no full understanding or common ground on, “What is identity?” The vernacular can be simple, but if I were to ask you, “What is ‘identity’?", and then ask ten more people around you -- I wouldn't get the same answer twice.

So often it's the simple words, with many meanings and many challenges, that are misinterpreted around the world.

I’m not saying that I have the answer, but if I were to take a stab at telling you I would describe my personal identity by saying: I’m a proud Brazilian, a Canadian immigrant, a data nerd, I’m an older sister to a brilliant lady called Beatriz, I am an economist, a silly dancer, I’m a woman, I’m disabled, I’m stubborn, I seek self awareness as my biggest power, I am very curious about everything, I like certain restaurants in Barcelona, and love certain shops in NYC. But, guess what? My answer to this question changes.

All. The. Time. The constant though, is that my answer is always context based. I typically change the answer to “What is my identity?” based on the situation at hand or how the response will position me. So if the world was like a KYC practice, you'd have the same answers all the time. Do you really know me then?

I don't think many of us can truly define identity. This is the first post in a series that is going to be my path of sharing with you, as I educate myself about this powerful thing that identity and trust really is.

Humans and Identity

There are 7.5 billion humans in the world. 2.4 billion of which are considered less fortunate (from poor or rural areas of the world), and about 1.5 billion of whom are over the age of 14, cannot answer the question to the satisfaction of authorities, as to who they are. While they certainly know who they are, like I do above, they are often excluded from property ownership, free movement, and social protection simply because they can’t prove their identity.

Humans have historically tried qualifying, quantifying and identifying things, including themselves. With the advancement of technology, we have built processes and systems as a way of identifying ourselves and others to be able to secure and ensure rightful access, and entitlements given to the rightful humans using these systems or services. We can all relate to the pain and friction that we experience in our everyday life associated with the simple act of proving who we are. From cards, to complicated passwords, usernames, codes or tokens…none of which is actually us.

Welcome to Identity Around the World

Identity is something so personal, yet there are so many definitions of it and use cases for proving it. Telecommunication companies need it, health care needs it, banks and FinTech need it - we all need identity. Knowing who you are dealing with, talking to, or trusting is not an option or luxury, it is a necessity -- and identity is the key to unlock this. Identity needs to become something that transcends conversations about annoying passwords, two factor authentication, biometrics or AI implication on humans.

Living at the center of every discussion is the human in these services and the identity of the people using the technology. I like to think of it as a forgotten superpower that people seem to miss – everyone is building the newest technology product and they forget that they have to track the identity of who that piece of technology actually belongs to. The list of technologies where the identity of the human plays a central and integral role is endless.

Not only is the human and their identity at the center of technology, we have to take into consideration the amount of data that each of the interactions with technology is being created. Every human interaction, every identity interaction with technology creates new data. So what does this mean? How can we move forward in technology while building pieces of our identity with data so quickly and in such broad scale? How will we handle the complexity that is becoming our identity as a result of technological growth?

“We are on the verge of looking back and realizing that we have gone through the largest growth of building the single largest asset class that is truly connected to humans: DATA. And, we are building this class at a faster pace than any other thing we have built at the past.”

Since your identity, your data pieces keeps growing...at a pace of 2.5 quintillion bytes a day. This it’s about a bigger pursuit - consider it an education in identity, a topic that touches every single person, every single day, yet most of us, common humans, know literally nothing about it. How much of our personal data do we think or even know is connected to our identity?

Identity needs to act as a central topic to all other conversations happening in the world today.

How does one define oneself?

When I think about identity, I go back to the basics to try and define the word itself. From overly obsessing over our choice of profile pictures on social media to the social groups we are part of, and figure out what is the definition of a group or social setting that influences identity. Think of the historians that go back to the Roman empire and say that the definition of a tribe is what constituted order. So maybe the definition of a person’s passport or government ID is what allows a government or a sovereignty to put order into the identifying of people and tracking them. If you think about it, we haven’t changed that much! Even though there is all this technology around the world we still use tangible things to identify ourselves; keys, FOBs, cards, paper, passwords, you name it.

Is identity power? Or is it trust?

Is identity a physical ownership of a thing? Maybe it’s something in the future of a digital world? No matter which way you look at it, your identity is a metaphorical key to unlock things. Think about the news from the other week about having your driver’s license on your phone. What was once a physical plastic card could now live in a digital format, but it still serves the same purpose - it unlocks your ability to drive with a certain level of trust associated to that. This sense of trust of an identity, especially in a digital world is going to become even more valuable as institutions like Fintechs need to verify identities for regulatory purposes. Your access might be granted based on your digital history… but what if it wasn’t you?

Control and Identify Risk

The ability to control and identify risk is actually something that predates technology. It’s something that humans have always done to survive. Since before civilization we have always “sized up” other humans to determine how much risk they mean to our own well being or even existence. If I know where you stand, I know how to interact with you. However with control, identity has become an all-constricting jacket of labels and pieces of documentation, processes and procedures.

So, when I think about pursuing the truth about what identity really is, I see it more as an ever flowing and changing thing that each of us should be able to control and understand. Context changes risk and should change control. This is where it becomes sad and concerning to me, everywhere I look I see convenience trumping security and privacy. If people don’t understand what their identity really means then how can they protect it?

What about identifying with all the “things”?

By 2020 it is estimated that each human will own an average of 6.5 devices. As the number continues to grow, how are we supposed to be identified by all these things? How is identity changing for the service provider, the government, and the human being as it becomes more difficult to keep up with knowing what and who you’re interacting with. It comes down to the interoperability of identity and its effect on the fact that passwords, usernames, and pieces of plastic are no longer going to cut it.

I don't have the answers. I don't have an instruction manual or a 10-step process you can just follow. What I will always have is this inherent curiosity and desire to understand. I will write as a human. I will share perspectives and different sides of the same issue. I may even venture too far in the future, but I want to provoke you to think and evoke you to share along the way.