Identities and Butterflies
on August 2nd, 2008
Identity is not easy to define. Lots of smart people have been thinking, talking, and writing about identity for years. See Kim Cameron’s blog for lots of resources from academics and practitioners. Unfortunately, most of these definitions are indigestible by mere mortals. Identity, it seems, is one of these deceptively deep ideas.
Dave Snowden’s takes an interesting approach. He lays out several criteria for identity — the roles you play, the “blurriness” of your identity, and how your identity changes over time. What struck me as interesting is how Professor Snowden borrows from chaos theory: “Identity in human systems is a strange attractor.” What?
A strange attractor is chaos theory jargon for a system that changes unpredictably when events change just a little. The weather is a common example — little disturbances can create big changes in the weather. As Edward Lorenz colorfully put it in 1972 when describing the butterfly effect: “A butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil can cause a tornado in Texas.”
What does this have to do with identity? Well, identity is chaotic, strange, and changes in big ways on small events. For example, consider becoming a parent. It depends on a single romantic moment. That single moment not only creates an identity where none was before. It also transforms you into a parent and forever changes parents into grandparents, sisters into aunts, etc.
Of course, identity is not just limited to individuals. Groups have identities too. The American identity shifted dramatically on November 7, 2000 when George Bush won the US election by just 537 votes, or 0.009%, in Florida. By many accounts, the election swung on the design of the butterfly ballot, an ironic coincidence with chaos theory’s butterfly effect.
For your online identity, the challenge is to naturally and safely use your identity in all its complexity, and seamlessly deal with the chaotic change that invariable happens to it over time.
