i202 Fall 2010 School of Information, UC Berkeley

September 13, 2010

Identity and Identification

It might seem like the question of identity, of what a single “thing” is, shouldn't be a problem. After all, we live in a world of things, and finding, selecting, organizing, using, and referencing them are everyday activities.  We are used to interacting with things in organizing systems we've created ourselves, that were created by other people, or that have been created through institutional or social processes.  But it’s really not as simple as it first appears. In order to organize these things, we also need to have a sense of how they will be used. How will we look up, select, assemble, reorganize, put away, or otherwise work with these things? Even though we can’t prepare for every possible use, we need to do our best to understand the potential, primary uses as well as the audience, or users. 

Plan for Lecture 4:

• Identity — What is a thing?
• Identifiers and Names
• Identity Over Time