The Future of You: Can Your Identity Survive 21st Century Technology?

But in order to do that I went to the University of Houston where I studied Future Studies, which anybody who's interested can still go to and study there now.

So that's how I went about it.

Rachel Salaman: What kinds of people are your clients?

Tracey Follows: Well, it started with more clients from the marketing world, I guess: people I'd worked with, companies I'd worked with in advertising and marketing. And I'd been client side and agency side, and I'd been in some quite big companies myself. And so that's how it started.

So, I was doing a lot of work around the future of media, the future of AI and ethics, and the future of gender, and trying to help brands really forecast the future and prepare for the future. And try and allow them to bring some of the codes and the symbols and the values of the future into their present work. So, making it more innovative, or modernizing older brands.

But as time has gone on, my clients are from everywhere now. I just did a big piece for Cussons, I've worked with Jaguar Land Rover, did a few pieces of work with Coca Cola, and I've still got my original clients, including Virgin.

But what I've found over the last couple of years, interestingly, is that I'm being asked to do more work for people and companies that are looking at investment. So they could be investment companies, or they could be pension boards, things like that, who are looking to take a much longer-term view now and to try and plan ahead: maybe not just 10 years, but maybe 20 years, maybe even 50 years in some cases.

And then in addition to that I work for quite a lot of nonprofits. So I've just finished a project on the future of learning in education and I'm well ensconced today in a project on the future of housing.

So it could be anything to be honest. One never really knows what one's going to get briefed on from one week to the next, which is quite exciting!

Rachel Salaman: And presumably they don't expect you to actually foretell the future, to be some kind of mystic; it's more about, what is it, trends, how would you describe it?

Tracey Follows: Some of it is trends, but a lot of it is preparation.

There is a bit of schism in the futuring community, I think, between people who think you can predict the future and others who think you can't predict the future; you can only prepare for the future.

I guess really, you're trying to do a little bit of both, because if you look at some of the technologies you can predict some of the future applications or jobs and things like that.

Obviously, anything societal or cultural is a lot more difficult to predict and so that's really more about preparing. So you're looking at preparing for different possible outcomes, or different possible futures as we would call them, not just the probable future.

And so, a lot of the work is around drawing out scenarios, perhaps world building, envisioning a place or a space you want your brand or business or company or organization to get to – a preferable future.

And a lot of it is about exploration, not just prediction, you're right, yeah.

Rachel Salaman: Hmm, fascinating. Well, onto your book then, "The Future of You," and the subtitle is "Can Your Identity Survive 21st Century Technology?"

Tracey Follows: [Laughs]

Rachel Salaman: What's your definition of identity in the book?

Tracey Follows: I started the book thinking, "Well, I need a definition of identity, obviously, that's where you start these things!" But as I went through this process of research, I realized that different cultures have different definitions of identity, and even within, say, our own Western culture, there are different ways of seeing identity.

I think traditionally people think identity is a kind of permanence over time at its simplest. So how can one identify, point to, earmark one thing that is unchanging over time? So it was the same in the past, it was the same item or person now as it was in the past, and it will potentially be in the future.

But of course, that opens up lots of discussions about how would one know that? And the big debate over, what, the last 200 years – and probably more actually – has been a kind of reflection of the Cartesian model.

Which is, well... Do you think identity resides in the mind and in consciousness and memory, and it's the continuation of memory over time, so it's like a mental process or a mental property... ? Or, is it actually a physical property? Is it the body, for example, and if you change that, if you make too many physical changes, are you still the same person?

And I think that's where it's been traditionally.

And in the book, I weigh up both of those and talk about both of those approaches or philosophies throughout.

But also what I found was there's a more sort of Buddhist philosophy, that perhaps is galvanizing more support or becoming more influential in Western culture, not just Eastern or Asian culture, which is the idea that you're never really "you" until the end of your life, in a way.

You become you throughout time because you're really the summation of every single interaction you've had with every single person over time, and that's what makes you "you" by the end of it.

Of course, there are other ideas around social belonging and how actually your identity is not something that you can define: it's your tribe or society or group [who] confer identity on you.

And we've seen lots of interesting examples of that I think, even in modern-day culture, where somebody has said they are of a specific ethnic origin or they are of a specific group, and actually the group has said, "Uh uh, no you're not!" [Laughs]

So, to answer your question simply, I don't think there is one definition of identity. And that's one of the things I wanted to explore in the book, because I think the ramifications and implications of technology are kind of asking us to reappraise that question once again.

Rachel Salaman: Yes, and your book is focused on the various risks to our identity that technology poses.

Tracey Follows: Mm.

Rachel Salaman: But what about people who keep their digital interactions to a minimum, people who avoid social media, they don't have a banking app and so forth – how much does your vision of the future apply to them? Or, to people who just don't have access to the internet?

Tracey Follows: Well, you see I think it still has implications for their identity because, as society moves on or society makes some assumptions about what our identity is, based on the profiling that's taking place of us now (which is massive, through lots of different types of technologies), then there are some questions about your identity (or maybe some assumptions, rather) that are made for you.

One only has to walk down the street or go into a store...

So, say you go into a new Amazon store with its "just walk out" technology that's based on picking products off the shelf that are monitored through sensors. Or you walk down the road and you're subject to facial recognition. Your identity is still being digitized and owned and distributed across lots of technological networks.

It's fragmented and it exists in lots of different places... and in a sense, we're not having the kinds of ownership of our identity as we move into the 21st century that we would have had, or maybe we thought we had in the 20th century...

So, I think it doesn't really matter how much or how little you're using technology, society is using technology and the state certainly is using technology. And that obviously has ramifications for not only who you are, but how you are treated and how you are assumed to be someone you are.

Rachel Salaman: Mm, yeah. Your book has a really neat structure with each chapter looking at a different aspect of technology and identity, starting with "Knowing You," which explores how personal data is collected and used. Then there's "Watching You," about how governments use our digital ID data. I was struck by your example of Taiwan. Could you talk a little bit about that?

Tracey Follows: Yeah, that was really a fascinating interview I had with Audrey Tang, who's the Digital Minister for Taiwan.

She actually started as part of the Occupy movement and then was taken into government after all the protests, which is interesting in itself isn't it? And partly because of that, [she] has got a really innovative way of thinking about how to use digital and digital tools to aid democracy.

And this is one of the great comparisons, I thought, with some of the things that are happening in Europe and in the West.

Maybe to sum it up, the idea is that these kinds of technologies are not used for surveillance, they are used for collective intelligence.

So, for example, she was telling me about how they have these web platforms – there are at least two web platforms that the population can use to vote on ideas that the government has. So it's more of a direct democracy example, and I think it's called the Join platform...

So you can up-vote or down-vote on some of the ideas that the government might have. And that's a way of trying to get some sort of consensus around some of the ideas, and build some consensus, and get a feel for what the population like, don't like, as a majority would sign up to. And there are other platforms where individuals or citizens can suggest their own ideas.

But also, she was talking to me about how she would go out to even the remotest areas of Taiwan, whether it's up in the hills or down in the coastal areas, and go out to some of these villages and small towns and take a telepresence wall so that she could beam the cabinet into that space.

And what's fascinating about that is that these digital tools are therefore being used to take the government out to the people, not to get the people to be given access to the government, if you see what I mean. And so it really flips it on its head.

These digital tools are being used to help, I guess in a way, to help the citizens keep an eye on and interact with the government, rather than have the government interact [with] and keep an eye on the populace.

And that, of course, speaks to a completely different version of trust where not only do the citizens trust each other, but they trust their government.

And in too many areas of life at the moment, and certainly through the pandemic, we had the government not trusting its citizens, and to some extent – to a large extent actually in the end – the citizens not trusting the government and not trusting each other.

So, I thought it was a really good comparison, actually.

Rachel Salaman: Mm. So how possible do you think it is for other countries to emulate some of the more successful ideas that Taiwan is modeling in this area?

Tracey Follows: It's interesting you should ask that, actually, because I was having this debate with somebody the other day because it popped up in a conversation about something else entirely and we were chatting about this... And they were saying, it's actually quite important that Audrey came from the Occupy movement. There was something about the hackers, the Occupy movement, the people that wanted to radically change the way that governance was carried out.

And I think that speaks to... it needs a kind of collapse or some real challenge before government can be altered in that way. I don't think we're going to get it through baby steps and small evolutions; I think it's going to take something quite radical – I'm not necessarily suggesting a revolution! – but it's going to need revolutionary times, or a situation like that, in order for us to think about radically improving our trust-based systems that use technology in that way.

So, I'd hope that it would happen in other countries, but I'm more cautious in saying that I think it can, to be honest, because I think it's cultural and societal as much as it is technological.

Rachel Salaman: The chapter called "Creating You" looks at how we curate our own identities online, and there's a part that describes how the design of avatars can influence how we behave in real life, so it's another kind of reversal. Could you talk about that insight?

Tracey Follows: There's some very interesting experiments going on with avatars in terms of how it alters our behavior with one another and how it even alters our own perceptions of our own behavior and who we are.

I think one of the most... I think this is what you're referring to... the work with Jeremy Bailenson. (I think he's at Stanford now.)

And he did a lot of experiments where people would go into these environments thinking that they were going to carry out some communication or interact with somebody else in an avatar, and he would place them in different avatars, or they would certainly think they were in different avatars. And what he found was that their own behavior was very much affected by the avatar they thought they were, so how they thought they showed up affected their own behavior.

So, for example, if they thought they were a really tall person in a virtual reality space, they might be much more confident. He found that they were... I think it was that they were better negotiators because they felt like they were more imposing when they were taller. And if they felt like they were very small avatars, they acted differently. And likewise, if they were more "attractive," they would be much more confident.

So, I also found that when I talked to people in Tokyo who were very very busy doing all this live streaming... (They were running live-streaming social feeds, which are so busy – the amount of information that's coming at you all the time, and the amount of avatars there, there's a lot going on!) They were talking to me about the effect of avatars as well.

They were saying that, actually, what it's allowed people to do is be discovered.

So sometimes when they are themselves on some of these social platforms, they are less confident; and if they can take on an avatar, suddenly, they're able to turn up in these environments and sing their heart out or play piano, and they've found these amazing talents.

But the people have only been able to put themselves up for that behind the sort of façade or the mask (which interestingly is the kind of definition of persona of course) of an avatar, and that again is fascinating.

So, who we turn up as, who we represent ourselves as, how we profile ourselves, is obviously having a really fundamental and quite profound effect on our communication and our interaction in lots and lots of different ways: I just gave you two examples there.

And I think there's not enough research going on about this really, because, if we do end up having lots of meetings, or potentially even being in two places at once, with slightly different avatars... If we do want to build ourselves a wardrobe of avatars, let's say, for different kinds of occasions or situations or to deal with different people in different ways... Again, that's us fragmenting our own identity.

Certainly [it's] in a way that we acknowledge and in a way that is managed by us and controlled by us, but it's [also] in a way that I don't think we're really researching enough, because it has these fundamental implications for how we're going to communicate throughout the 21st century now.

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Rachel Salaman: The ideas in your book do get increasingly dystopian as we move through "Connecting You," which looks at human-to-machine relationships, and then "Replacing You," about how some traditional jobs are already being done by robots instead of humans.

Is there anything positive in what you foresee in these two areas, the Connecting You and the Replacing You?

Tracey Follows: Well, I think on Connecting You, we've seen some amazing work just coming out of AI programs even in recent weeks. So we've had Stable Diffusion, DALL-E, all of these content-automation platforms that are allowing us to work with AI to do some amazing creativity and to do it very speedily and to do it at scale.

I was messing about with Stable Diffusion the other day and some of the "prompts" that are required... All you really need to do is finesse and engineer the right prompts, and then the output could be amazing.

Obviously, there are big implications for intellectual property, for copyright, for the existing craft and creative community, but for those that are really embracing this, I think they're achieving amazing things.

And we can do this of course on ourselves and our own identity, but what it might mean is that anybody can be an author, anybody can be a creator. Because now we have some tools at our fingertips that allow us to make real what might be in our heads and that we haven't been able to get out before because we haven't had the ability.

So, I do think that's really really interesting, but of course one has to sort of relearn or educate oneself with how to work collaboratively with these tools. And I actually think that's a big emerging field actually, of new teaching and training and education, because we won't necessarily be able to do that off the bat. And again it's that learning new ways to interact, this time with non-humans, I guess.

In terms of Replacing You, I think one of the things I was trying to make clear in the book is that the brain-computer interface, this idea that we can link our brains to a computational device or use technology to infiltrate the brain and perhaps send messages to outside or external devices, is further down the line than people think. And [But] I think that will probably enter the workforce again earlier than people think, maybe at the beginning of the 2030s.

I think again that's going to let a lot of people do things that they perhaps haven't been able to do before. It will be able to replace some elements that people might have lost through accidents or illness and things like that, so again that is incredibly positive.

Of course, it's then going to move onto augmentation, so able-bodied people will use it to augment their own abilities or their own cognition on top of what they already have as human beings, and there's a lot of ethical conversations to be had around that.

But as I said in the book, I do think there are some elements that are positive to come out of that.

I do agree that overall, it is a little worrying because legally, ethically, regulatorily (if that's a word!) we're not ready for this sort of technology.

And what we are really talking about is kind of the internet as an external force, but actually becoming an internal force, an internal ability. So the internet inside us rather than the place outside that we visit – where we were just talking about virtual reality, now the internet is really inside us.

And I do think we have to look to policy makers and regulators to make sure that there is the right kind of framework and the right kind of ethical guidelines and guardrails, if you like, around this, in order for it to proceed.

So, for example, in Chile, I know they were looking at – I don't know where it is now, but they did try to get through parliament a law which is around "neurorights." So it's trying to protect people from having their memories altered or harvested, if you like, all of this sort of stuff, which potentially will be possible.

But it was interesting to me to see how forward thinking the Chilean government had been, or certainly there must have been lobbyists working around this, to try and at least set the policy around it so that it wasn't just going off and "mad" technologists trying to do things that they shouldn't be doing.

Rachel Salaman: Now is this related to transhumanism, which you talk about in your book?

Tracey Follows: It could be, sometimes it is and sometimes it's not. Yes.

Rachel Salaman: So, what is transhumanism and what's the relevance for regular people of it?

Tracey Follows: I think I'm probably not the best person, but there are lots of really famous transhumanists who talk at length... and they have slightly different versions of transhumanism.

But I think really at core it's the ability to transform oneself. And it is a kind of transition, to transform oneself into an augmented being, really. So, to improve on one's abilities in some way, or to reduce the limitations one feels, particularly from one's own human body, if that is the situation with you.

So, it could be cognitive augmentation, as we have just been talking about. It could be mind uploading, which is one that the media love to talk about, [and] which is a long, long way off and fairly questionable at the moment whether it can even be done, because the analog brain and a computer, which could be seen as a digital brain, are quite different really. Or it could be exoskeletons, limbs... it could be all sorts of physical augmentation to make the body stronger.

Of course, in the book I also consider cryonics, which is the preservation of the body, or even just the head [laughs] and just the brain in the head, over time, so that one can be revived in 20 years, 50 years, maybe 100 years.

And this is all... transhumanism is maybe a catchall for the idea that one can augment what one was given at birth or has physically and cognitively, and to improve one's ability and to sense the world in new ways, or to live longer than perhaps the upper limit that we have to human life at the minute, which is like 123 years. And to go onwards and improve and progress the human being and the human spirit.

Rachel Salaman: Yes, and this chapter where you deal with these issues is called "Enhancing You" and it does have a more positive feel to it.

At the end of the chapter, you say we need to participate actively in the discussion and debate about how much of who we are is in our nurture and in our nature, and whether in the future we will need nature at all, which is an astonishing statement!

Could you unpick that for us and explain why we need to talk about this?

Tracey Follows: Well, I think there are lots of examples, and I was writing this in... (you're taking me back now!) I was writing this in... at the beginning of 2020, and I was also writing, I think in that chapter, about genetics.

Because in a sense, I guess that's part of transhumanism as well, in a sense. This idea that you can have more control using technology and go beyond your human limits in a sense, and I think what we saw during the pandemic actually, and with the vaccines, and the conversation about what this new type of mRNA was...

But I think that's a great example: are we changing our genetic makeup and if so, who is changing it and how could we possibly know how it's changing and what amount of control do we have?

And I think even on something like an mRNA vaccine, one can't really, as a citizen or a person, can't really answer those questions in a really well-equipped manner.

So one wonders what else could be expected of us as citizens.

Rachel Salaman: It is difficult, but in the book, you do urge people to actively engage with all of the issues that we've discussed. What are some ways to get involved and get engaged?

Tracey Follows: I think one of the interesting issues that came about as I was writing the book, and that I'd already foreseen, was the implementation of digital identity, using technology to provide a way to authenticate or verify yourself and your identity if you wanted access to public services or you were going to use a digital currency, for example.

And I think that's one of the things that people could do now, to appraise themselves better of some of the technologies and the different means of bringing about a digital identity. Because that will really matter, and in a funny sort of way it's the gateway to lots of other things that would happen technologically, whether it's connecting you or enhancing you or preserving you.

Whatever it is, if our identity is being digitized, then we want to be in control of it.

We want to use a centric digital identity where we have our privacy protected and we get to use it in the way that we want to use it, when we want to use it. Not a kind of system that they've instituted in India with the Aadhaar system, or in China, where you are stuck to a biometric and somebody, somewhere is kind of surveilling where you've been and what you were doing and having some sort of tabs on your identity through digital systems.

So, we really want to look more at the usage of digital wallets and how identity or identification and authentication works out of those wallets and how much user control one has. And so that would be a great place to start for people because, as I say, it is the gateway, but it is probably the thing that's coming fastest – in fact there's lots of conversations happening around it now.

I think in the first chapter I make the point about [how] the state now has a belief (it doesn't matter what party it is, in the Western world in particular), the states all have the belief that the successful state of the future is a technological state. So governments are very busy transferring all of our old analog systems into digital systems.

And therefore, we will need to operate as a digital persona, as a digital identity. And so I can't think of anything more important really to research or to know about or to have an opinion on than that, because it affects literally every single aspect of one's life going forward.

Rachel Salaman: So how optimistic or pessimistic are you about the future of identity looking forward a decade or two or three?

Tracey Follows: Gosh, it depends which day you get me on.

Rachel Salaman: [Laughs]

Tracey Follows: I really do swing between, "Oh my goodness me, this is going towards quite an authoritarian situation!" and then other days I think, "No, there's enough resistance and actually it will all be fine because the human spirit will triumph." And I suppose I do think that. In the long run, I think the human spirit always overcomes.

And so like with so many technologies over history I think we will integrate it into our lives, and in this case integrate it into ourselves, but overall, we will find a way to ensure that the balance is right...

Because really the alternative is unthinkable! We can't allow it to happen.

And I guess all I'm saying is, "Let's debate and discuss it a lot more now before we get further down the road." But I think 10 years from now...

I'm not optimistic for the next couple of years I must say; I think we're in a very strange time, it's a bit of a limbo land, a bit of an interregnum between the decline of an old system and the emergence of a new system. But I think by 2030...

I don't think we're all going to be walking around with RFID chips in that are connected to the state and the state has control, I really don't think that's going to happen.

But I do think the human spirit will triumph and we'll have a good relationship with technology and a balanced one, and that's as it should be.

Rachel Salaman: Well, let's hope so. Tracey Follows, thanks very much for joining us today.

Tracey Follows: Thanks so much for having me.

Rachel Salaman: The name of Tracey's book again is "The Future of You: Can Your Identity Survive 21st Century Technology?" I'll be back in a few weeks with another Expert Interview. Until then, goodbye.