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of the device. To this end, we need to examine at least a cursory overview of the salient mechanisms.

Identity

The human impetus to form groups springs from the full spectrum of the needs hierarchy; from physiological requirements to the drive for transcendence. It has been through groups that the species has thrived. Abraham Maslow indicated as much in Toward a Psychology of Being when he noted that most needs require the support of others. When considered across the full range of needs, a number of foundational concepts of group establishment and maintenance can be recognized. To be a member of a group is to be part of a collection to which others belong as well. Being the only member of a group is not conducive to satisfying the broad range of needs that require others. Having multiple members in any group, however, implies that we might well seek to tell them apart. The characteristics of being lumped into a group and then of being unique within that group are somewhat obtuse and hence the mechanisms used to differentiate among the collectives, and the individuals within them, give rise to the multi-faceted concept called identity.

Identity is a concept that is known to all of us but understood by few of us. This is not a statement that most people are dumb and a few are smart. Rather, it is a realization that we all have an understanding of identity, but we have many different perceptions of what that understanding is. The very term suggests so many nuances that it is difficult to speak analytically about it with the words we typically use. While thus far we have referred to identity as if it had a single, well-defined meaning, this is in fact rather illusory. Consequently, some of the other concepts we have previously introduced may need to be re-examined in light of a more detailed understanding of the full concept of identity. To this end, we need a more rigorous vocabulary in order to systematically understand or design systems that involve services related to identity in all its guises.

Within the model of social ecosystems that we have suggested, identity is a mechanism through which policy can be specifically ascribed to the entities that participate in interactions. Explicit within the model is the seminal provision of a trust infrastructure that defines the extent of a specific ecosystem. In order to effect trusted policy within this infrastructure, one must be able to establish trust in identity. However, the single word identity encompasses many facets and it is often difficult to focus on any one facet in a manner orthogonal to the other facets and hence to derive trust from either causality or process. We suggest that a necessary step toward alleviating these difficulties is to arrive at new terms with more precise definitions for characteristics that too often are all simply lumped under the single heading. We will pursue this expanded vocabulary by considering the facets of identity through distinct perspectives ranging from the physical ecosystem through current social orders.

In Chapter 3, we noted that within the physical ecosystem among-species interactions tend to fall into five categories: coexistence, competitive coexistence, symbiotic, parasitic and predatory. We can see in certain of these categories the beginning of species based identity and then subsequently of individual identity within a single species. The most benign of interaction types, that of coexistence, already assumes the differentiation of entities or of groups comprised of similar entities. Competitive coexistence suggests that the differentiation among individuals or groups is grounded in the reality of natural selection. The entities that are in competition, whether individuals or groups, can be classified according to interaction consequences, perhaps to the extreme that one group might emerge from the competition in such a superior position that the

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