Labels

What identifies you? What labels do you apply to yourself? How do others label you?

Here are some labels I wear, in no particular order:

nice man, fat guy, middle age, geek, programmer, writer, good dad, loving husband, sci-fi buff, atheist, role-player, gamer, avid reader, futurist, game designer, data modeler, interaction designer, skilled lover, generous, kind, middle-class, home owner, safe driver, consultant, music lover, humorous, depressed.

Some people think labels are bad, limiting, boxing, stereotyping.

I think they're just convenient abstactions. Quick ways to sum up some of what we are. A list of applicable labels is just a start, but it's a start. There's no way to understand someone without using them. We simply need to keep in mind that no pile of labels can be complete. They can never tell the whole story.

To know someone, we need their history, philosophy, talents, virtues, and flaws. And then we need to meet them, and those whose lives they impact the most. We need to feel their chemistry and gauge the weight of their lives.

The labels that apply at one age are not the ones that apply later in life. My list above would have been quite different when I was 16, rather than now at 46. We grow, change, evolve. We get better, mostly. We get worse, a little.

If you know me, or have met me, think how would you order the list of labels I supplied above. Reflect on whether it'd be anything like how I would order them? What labels would you add? Which did you not know or would not have ever guessed? I wonder what labels I have for you that aren't true. How have I got the emphasis wrong, even for the ones I'm right about?

Maybe you consider your most defining label something like "aging rebellious daughter", while I'd have to guess "physician". It's only because I don't know you well enough. Perhaps you haven't been truthful or open with me, or perhaps I only see you in a single context.

This is nothing new. We all know this. I wonder about it alot, though. 

I wonder if someday, maybe through some barely imagined technology, we'll find a way to share our identities with people more efficently. Imagine if everybody had a blog where they actively described themselves, and then some super-smart indexing algorithm (a sort of psychologist-google) could summarize that on your eyeglass's augmented reality display. I'd meet you in church and instantly know that you're an "athletic beach lover cartoonist" or "cheerfully liberal European history buff" or "animal-rights-activist jazz singer".

I wonder if we'd make friends faster, avoid more misunderstandings, and get along better. Or would this really just be a way for marketers to target us.

I suppose we'll find out in a few more years.