There are some interesting posts arising from the Pulver 5 meme thing.  Pulver is receiving some criticism for self gratification and promotion from the meme. I will stay out of that one and don’t know the participants.

However the matter of identity, and willingness to post “5 things that you didn’t know about me” was raised here by Confused. He stated something that struck me as deep and thoughtful when he pointed out that identity is defined in different ways, depending on your culture.

In many cultures identity is defined by what you stand for, what groups you belong to. Some of these groups may be based on simple things like geography or blood, but most such groupings are complex and form an integral part of identity.

Whereas generally in the West, we have migrated the identity concept to a number. Drivers licence, Social Insurance, Health Card, are all numbers, and identity is driven from those into such things as financial records, and credit bureau reports.

Lost in all that is a persons underlying identity … who am I? Surely more than a few pieces of plastic.

Jordan at Equanimity wrote in reference to the “you” in “5 things that you didn’t know about me” :-

But forgive me for asking: who are you, anyway? who am I to you. That’s the flaw in the premise of the meme that gets me. Can’t say what someone doesn’t know if you don’t know who someone is.

This raises identity to be something that cannot exist in isolation.

You are not just Sam Doe, 38963w6 – you are Sam Doe of the Clova Doe’s, married to Helen of the Prosen Doig’s. Currently working at Bank of America, in the Trade Finance group, and enjoy cycling, and hiking in the Adirondacks. Am a dedicated IBM Thinkpad user, and don’t understand Mac people at all. (pardon the Scottish but fictitious examples – its what I know)

This has interesting implications for Social Networks and Social Finance sites – something I have been calling Open Source Finance. If Social Networks are truly a throwback to natural groupings that occurred in the wild in tribal societies, then some of the attributes that made those work must be brought forward.

We in the West, at least my generation, have been programmed to be private, and confidential, particularly abut financial affairs. Yet in the old days, of Friendly Societies, everyone knew everything about everyone, and the support and assistance that came with that made all very comfortable. Those same attributes can be relayed into Open Source Banking models, through groups, support and assistance between members to generally elevate the quality of the service.

The first examples are generally in the loan space. However the intriguing part of some of those examples is that they are as much about investing (the lenders) as they are about borrowing. Banks are truly cut out of the equation, disintermediated.

Some may call these additional components of identity reputation. But its more than that … these are fundamental non-numbered attributes of a person, and who they are.

Technorati tags: social+networks, social+lending, open+source+banking, identity, vrm