Online Identity: what is it?

With the hype of Web 2.0 and social networking, online identity has been a popular term. The management of online identities, however, is gradually becoming a severe problem. Identity overload is a fundamental problem of Web 2.0. To solve it, we need to have a better understanding about the details of online identity.

By definition, identity means the distinct personality of an individual regarded as a persisting entity. There are three key terms in this specification---individual, distinct personality, and persisting entity.

Individual

An identity (no matter whether it is "online") is for an individual. Therefore, an individual person must exist before his identity exists. Although this derivation is trivial, do individuals always exist?

In the real human world, the answer to the former question is trivial. By nature, humans exist as individuals. Nobody lives due to the live of another person and nor does anybody lives because of the existence of any natural or social context. Being removed all context and relatives, an individual person is still himself. Being added any context or relative, an individual person remains also just himself; no more, no less. Every human being is a unique individual, or he is a unique, though shallow, image of God.

When we look for the answer on the Web, however, it becomes very different. Can anybody tell an individual person on the Web? Most of the time, we cannot. Most often, on the Web we may only tell a portion of an individual. For example, at YouTube we may tell an individual eye, at LinkedIn we may tell an individual hand, and so on. But does a unique individual person ever exist on the Web? Generally the answer is no till now.

Then back to the initial derivation stated at the beginning of this section. If online individuals even do not exist, how is it possible to produce online identities for these individuals?

Distinct Personality

An identity is about personality. This is an important catch of meaning because a common misconception says that an identity is such as a name or a social security number. In fact, either a person name or a SSN is just a reference to some real identity instead of the identity itself.

We may clarify a few important thoughts after insistently distinguishing reference to identity from identity itself. For example, identity is unique not due to the uniqueness of references. In the other words, whether references to identity are unique actually does not matter much; identity (if it is identity) is always unique discarding how it is referenced.

But there is a problem---personalities in general are not unique. As we know, varied persons may have the same personality. Hence identity is not just about personality, it is about distinct personality.

When identity is about distinct personality, online identities must be about the distinct online personalities. Moreover, the distinct online personalities are not the same as the references to the distinct online personalities. That is, an URI (or URL) is not and should not be an online identity because it does not determine any real distinct personality, even if the personality is online.

Persisting Entity

An identity is an entity. By being entity, identities are verifiable. Note that it is not verifiable in general to everything that is about personality of an individual. But if a thing belongs to an identity, the thing must be verifiable. Beyond, an identity is not only verifiable but also persistently verifiable. That is, an identity must be a persisting entity.

The property of persistence shows the existence of a constant methodology of identity checking. In the other words, we do not have to enforce the uniqueness of URL in order to perform identity maintenance. Allow me explain it using an analogue. I can always identify whether a woman is my wife not by checking her name, her look-like, her SSN, etc, but through the direct communication between us. I identify her by her unique personality and such a personality is actually an persisting entity.

Discussion wrap-up

So have we answered what online identity is? Not yet. But at least we now have a few insights about the answer.

1) We need to have online individual before assigning online identity to individual.

2) Online identity is not reference to online identity.

3) Online identity is an invariant on the Web.

4) Online identity can have very rich content (because personality is rich).

5) There exists an objective, constant method to verify online identity.

Any more words? Yes, on Web 3.0 the issue of online identity will be generally solved.

Invariants on the Web

Invariant is something that does not change under a set of transformations. The picture on the right shows Pappus’s Invariant in geometry. The invariant tells that by following certain rules the three intersection points shown in the figure are always collinear no matter how people may draw the two lines and locate ABC and DEF in the lines respectively.

Invariant study is fundamental to any scientific research, especially when the research domain is as complex as World Wide Web. Invariants are supposed to be constant within the specified research scope. By well understanding the invariants we may effectively improve the knowledge over many complicated issues. Therefore, it is unsurprisingly for us to see the discussion of invariant study in the new Web Science Research Initiative.

In "A Framework for Web Science", the flag article of Web Science, Tim Berners-Lee and his colleagues have carefully studied several invariants on the Web. In particular, one invariant is outstanding among all the others. The one is URI (Uniform Resource Identifier). In the paper Berners-Lee et. al. had focused on discussing which invariant represents the binding of semantics with declared objects. There was no final best solution concluded in the paper, however, the one closest to the best was URI.

In varied programming languages we have widely used an invariant, which is declared name. In programming languages such as Java or C++, "each unique object (i.e. with distinct semantics) is declared with a distinct name in one program. By referencing a name, a program accesses the semantics behind the name." Hence declared name is taken to be invariant.

On the Web we are currently using another invariant. "Web researchers decide to use location binding to solve the problem, i.e. URIs and URLs. By default, identical URIs reference the same semantics. Identical URIs on web is the same as identical declared names in programs. However, the name of this URI is varied, i.e. name is no longer an invariant. In constrast, URI becomes a new invariant."

The authors, however, pointed out that indeed neither of the two was proper invariant on Semantic Web (or on the future Web). "The difference is, however, that the requirement of machine understanding," said by the authors. We actually have no ways to promise the consistency of the meaning to which a URI points. It is the same as we cannot enforce users to consistently bind the same name to any unique object on the Web.

Although with the problem, the authors did not provide a satisfactory answer to the problem in their paper. By contrast, they simply emphasized that "W3C suggests that do not transfer URI to another object. That is, whenever you create an object, giving it a unique URI. This requirement is thus the same as that whenever we create a new object in program, make sure we give it a unique name." In other words, please do not change the referred destination of any URI though anybody has the right to perform such a change. This passive resolution is not a satisfactory answer. Deprecated URI has gradually become a severe problem when more and more Web applications start to assume URI to be invariant on the Web. May we have an alternate, active answer to the question?


The figure above shows three basic components when we bind semantics with certain object. They are the declared name, the object itself, and a link connecting the two sides. So which one of them is truly invariant when they are presented on the Web?

As the paper has discussed, neither the declared name nor the link (i.e., uri) is true invariant. "Apple" may be fruit or a software company. We have no way to restrict a handpointing to a fixed destination.

The only exceptional one is the object itself. Although by nature an object can only be itself and it is automatically an invariant to itself, how can we present this invariant besides name and link? This is thus the problem.

We humans have so customized of binding semantics with declared names that we have almost forgotten some more intrinsic binding beneath the surface.

When we are binding the declared name "apple" with the object apple, we are actually making a semantic computation in our brain such as to determine whether it is a fruit with red or yellow or green skin and sweet to tart crisp whitish flesh. For people, a name is not just a name, but also a computational procedure in human brains. It is actually not the name that identifies an object, it is the procedure that identifies the object. The declared name is only a named shortcut referred to the particular procedure in brain. When we convert the procedure to machines, it is an epistemological process.


The picture above shows the new paradigm of semantic binding on the Web. The left side is changed to a particular epistemological procedure (which could be implemented in various ways such as the one we have suggested). Unlike names, these procedures are unique since they can unambiguously answer either yes or no for any identification request. Based on these epistemological procedures, Web links (such as URIs) are upgraded to be Web threads. The Web threads connect the same Web into a varied layer. Moreover, from the philosophical and economical aspects the construction of epistemological procedures and Web threads would be the basis for the production of mind asset.

In summary, epistemological procedure and Web thread are invariants on the Web. Through Imindi, we are going to demonstrate the world something extraordinary happening on the Web.

UPDATE: related reading about URI, "What do people have against URLs or URIs?" by Kingsley Idehen.

Role of URI for Machine Understanding (Brainstorming with Tim Berners-Lee, issue 1)

(revised August 1st, 2008)

Well, where should I start? Beginning with a brainstorming by Tim's blog might be a good idea. Without his invention of World Wide Web, this blog communication could not have happened.

In his blog, Tim first mentioned his opinions about URI. Based on my understanding, a fundamental issue about machine-understanding is associating every Web data to an URI. Two identical URIs would simply mean two identical real-world objects. This philosophy is the cornerstone of the current machine-understanding.

Human-understanding begins also from a similar fundamental agreement. When a foreigner tries to communicate to a native, they talk by using fingers pointing to the same items. By speaking in different terms, gradually they understand each other. These fingers to humans are the URIs to machines.

Unless explicitly specified otherwhere, varied URIs by default mean differently (like two fingers pointing to different places). This rule is probably the most fundamental one in "machine-understanding." Otherwise the generic Web object identification problem could be very complicated.

Everyone deserves a URI! This is a brilliant point. One valuable but full of challenge request in the current Web development is human identification. When we type in a friend's name into current search engines, such as Google, we often get many search results of people who have the same name. If every Web user has a unique URI, which becomes his unique Web ID, it would be much easier for search engines to filter the results.

A question is, however, where a personal ID URI should point. The URI might point to a homepage, or a picture, or a short personal description, or a string of numbers such as social security number, or there are many other options. Any of these options could work; but every one of them has its limitation. For example, a string of numbers is easy to store and convenient for machine processing; but at the same time they are easy to be stolen and forged. On the other hand, a biography is semantically rich, harder to be forged, and easier to check its integrity. But it is much more time consuming to author biographies for every person and who is authorized to charge these biographies.

Tim suggested the use of FOAF RDF documents to be unique person indentifications. FOAF defines well-designed and easy-to-process attributes about individual persons. A problem is, however, that its RDF content is customized for sharing friends rather than identifying individuals. Is it really suitable for individual identification? This is an interesting problem that is worth of exploring in the future.

Referenced resources:

• Tim Berners-Lee's offical blog
• Give Everyone a URI
• Friend of a Friend (FOAF) project