People generally wear rings to indicate that:
a) they're married
b) they're about to be married [1]

Both of these rings traditionally use the same finger.
There's a lot more information potential in the information broadcasting apparatus.

I propose that a new cultural system be established to make use of the remaining bandwidth. In general to be a useful indicator, this should be information about the wearer which:

a) doesn't change very often
b) applies in some form to a significant proportion of people at some stage
c) Is either boolean or a small positive integer,
d) is useful or interesting in conversation,
e) is not generally held private, and
f) where presence or absence of ring(s) is not an issue for non-players.

Without making this a request for a list, I can say that I can't actually think of 9 such items. However, here are some:

a) Child finger. One ring per child.
b) Hobby finger. Any personal interest may be indicated with a stylised ring on this specific finger.[2]
c) this idea would be more convincing if there actually was a 'c'.

Um, okay, that's it.

[1] or
c) they're a goth.

[2] This is not intended to preclude the whimsical wearing of rings by non-players, but rather to ensure space for such use within this system.
-- Loris, Feb 01 2010

How about adopting that resistor standard (not that I know how to read it) where red, blue + green (might) = 1200mA?

That way, you could map onto other things that are normally associated with higher numbers.

These vital statistics might include
a) body weight in grammes
b) time since last wash in hours
c) codified 8-bit numeric specifying pizza topping preferences
d) goth quotient (0-80 signalling extremedly low gothicness, possible Nanna, 81-120 mid-range standard shrug, mehgoth, 121-140 Owns their own DMs, 140+ Massive Goth)
e) distance from home in miles
f) current velocity to the nearest mph - direction part of the vector indicated by pointing

And that's just one hand.
-- zen_tom, Feb 02 2010


[zen] You could even have one finger reserved for coloured rings showing your resistivity. (Also, I'm sure a typo on your part, but a resistor is unlikely to have a value of 1200mA)
-- hippo, Feb 02 2010


Oh yes, I shoud've done Ohms - is an Ohmega a valid HB character? Closest I can get is an Ö.
-- zen_tom, Feb 02 2010


It's one of those Unicode characters which you can't do in HB annotations.
-- hippo, Feb 02 2010


A range of colours on your right ring finger to denote sexuality?
-- Mrlemonjelly, Feb 04 2010


/ A range of colours on your right ring finger to denote sexuality?/

Or one might exploit the possibility of an 11th digit of information in some of the populace.
-- bungston, Feb 04 2010



random, halfbakery