Our Personal Identity & The State.

Identities of individuals (in effect, personal identities) were, (likely as not) first properly recorded by the Egyptians, and since then, a long line of rulers have found it necessary to identify as many of their subjects as possible throughout the ages, most of the time so that they could gather taxes from them.

The doomsday book commissioned by William the Conquerer was not the first of it's kind as a means of record for tax collection.  However, it was perhaps one of the first consolidated records of all the subjects, citizens and more importantly "the booty" that he had acquired of England.

Considering that our modern identity is perhaps, particularly only over the last 30 years, so reliant upon what the state, civil and social authorities, or global businesses hold in data bases for us, I considered an alternative way in which that mental image of identity could be reproduced.  In this case, I am thinking in terms of personal identifiers such as banking details, account numbers, finger-prints and other digitized mediums that almost all the populous has...


How could I use this in an a contemporary illustration of personal Identity began to emerge...