other becomes extinct. Symbiotic and parasitic interactions entail the differentiation of symbiotes on the one hand and parasite from host on the other. It is in the guise of predatory interactions that we best see the full gamut of identity’s facets.

Perhaps the way to begin an overview of identity is to consider the lack of it; a concept that we refer to as anonymity. Consider the interaction of predator and prey in the physical ecosystem. An interaction technique used by both is that of stealth. The predator may use stealth as it approaches its potential prey, while the prey in turn may use stealth as a means to avoid detection by the predator. As a facet of identity within social ecosystems, stealth is metaphorically consistent with anonymity. However, the equivalence breaks down when we consider not just the prelude to an interaction, and perhaps the interaction itself, but also the consequences of an interaction. We noted in Chapter 3 the ability of animals like the arctic hare to disguise or to eliminate their forensic wakes within the physical ecosystem. In other words, they are able to minimize the consequences of interactions that leave evidence of the interaction for others to find; however, further interactions could leave traces. Within a social ecosystem, we suggest a definition of anonymity as the complete lack of characteristics through which a member of a group can be distinguished. To achieve true anonymity, an interaction in which an anonymous person participates must have no forensic characteristics that can point to the specific person. As a side effect of this definition, it would seem obvious that no level of identity-derived trust can be ascribed to an anonymous entity.

Anonymity is central to the confluence of the concepts of identity and privacy, also a multi-faceted concept. In particular, we apply the term to both freedom-of-action as well as control-of-information. Within social ecosystems, there is a natural tendency to conclude that anonymity is an effective agent of privacy. The tendency derives from our experiences with social ecosystems in the small and with our observations of physical ecosystem interactions. However, we observe that within the existing social orders, achieving true anonymity is difficult if not impossible. Consequently, suggesting it as a foundation of privacy is perhaps a bit of wishful thinking. Rather, we suggest the consideration of additional facets of identity that might be of better use in obtaining the privacy that we seek. We will try to draw out these opportunities as we consider some rather simple examples.

With respect to social ecosystems, identity is about grouping people together according to some criteria and then distinguishing each person found in a specific group. At least two distinct approaches can be considered in providing these mechanisms. One method is to specify a group, add people into it and provide some mechanism to establish uniqueness of each individual within that group. This is the approach we use when we create the Social Security System, the Texas Driver License or your favorite airline frequent flyer program. Each group operates independently of the others and hence each is responsible for distinguishing its individual members, usually by assigning some unique identifier to each person within that group. The net result of this approach is that a person may belong to lots of groups and consequently have many unique identifiers; essentially, one from each group. We will ascribe the term experiential identity to this form of identification. We arrive at the term by observing that historically, within the realm of small social ecosystems such as the family, clan or tribe we tend to make use of this facet of identity to denote the life experiences of a person. Note that in this setting we don’t suggest that this mechanism is used to establish the uniqueness of the individual within the family, clan or tribe grouping. This is actually accomplished through a different mechanism that we’ll consider below. Rather, experiential identity is strongly related to the concept of reputation and hence to the association of trust to identity. The concept of reputation derives from the concept of trust established through causality and process that we discussed in Chapters 7 and 8. The examples we have suggested are

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