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

[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


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