Publications
Kim Cameron’s Laws of Identity
Kim Cameron, Chief Identity and Access Architect at Microsoft, published " the 7 laws of identity." For a more complete description and discussion, please follow the link to Kim's blog.
Identity Construction Environments: Developing Personal and Moral Values Through the Design of a Virtual City
Two research questions are at the heart of the work presented in this article: What kind of learning environment will afford opportunities for young people to naturally engage in reflection and discussion about issues of identity, in particular personal and moral values? and How can technologies have an impact on character and moral education? I propose identity construction environments (ICEs) as technological tools purposefully designed with the goal of supporting young people in the exploration of these issues.
The Design of Computational Tools for Developing a Sense of Self and Moral Values
We live in a society where concepts of self, community and what is right and wrong are constantly changing. This makes it particularly challenging for young people to construct a sense of self and to identify and develop their most cherished personal and moral values. It also puts pressure on schools and society to help them do so. This thesis explores how new technologies can be used to create environments explicitly designed to help young people explore their inner worlds. I coined the term identity construction environments (ICE) to refer to computational tools purposefully designed with the goal of helping young people explore different aspects of the self, in particular personal and moral values.
Digital Identity Constructions
With the expansion of networked communications and enhanced personal mobilities for many in ‘advanced’ societies, the accumulated digital records of individuals’ attributes, preferences and prior behaviour increasingly mediate peoples’ interactions among themselves and with organizations. Systemically organized and deployed, these records become a kind of “digital identity”, one that stands in for the ‘real’ person, especially during on-line transactions when the actual human bodies are not co-present. The growing role of these digital identities raises a host of complex and inter-related questions with profound implications for the emergence of the ‘new economy’. Most prominently are questions around the increasingly pervasive surveillance practices and the threats to personal privacy this poses. Related to this are shifts in the way that the trust between parties to a transaction is developed and maintained. Identities may be ‘corrupted’ in various ways with negative consequences -- from outright theft and impersonation, to mistaken identity due to closeness of data matches, to collection and processing errors that go undetected or are then difficult to correct once discovered. The identification stakes have been raised even further post-9/11 with heightened concerns around security. A central and cross cutting issue is who constructs these identities? What influence do the individuals concerned have on their digital representations? Under what conditions are they imposed, why and how? What practices do people adopt to assert their own identities?
