Engineering for Identity - sustany/dvg GitHub Wiki

Engineers introducing the designation identity to describe objectives or operational aspects of technology, regularly fail to establish a functional definition of the term before committing the concept to source code. Despite disagreements among scholars of social sciences, philosophers, and psychologists about many facets of identity, a general consensus about its uniquely human quality can be observed. Further separating human beings from objects and other living organisms are the ability to self-reflect and form intentions. Aside from situational and/or reflexive expressions, the basis for the latter is most often rooted in the sum of experiences, and memories thereof. Baring significant advances in human brain-monitoring technologies, engineering efforts serving human intentions thus far are limited to levels of observance and interpretation. In so far as this threshold is breached by technical implementations - i.e. software-assisted "social engineering" a form of "hacking" human-assisted processes, definitions must allow for the attribution of human agency. Privacy is a secondary considerations, since the (knowledge of) observations influences human behavior.

NOTE: At the time of this update (03/04/2022), there are no known technologies addressing identity management. Solutions using the latter description can readily be re-classified by the type and purpose of data collection: i.e. identification, including (for) access management and authentication, profiling, certification, etc.