The Future of You

Can your identity survive the twenty-first-century?

'Who am I?’ is one of the most fundamental questions of all. But it is becoming an increasingly difficult one to answer as technology forces us to negotiate many different versions of ourselves, challenging every aspect of who we are. 

In a digital, data-driven world, our identity has become distributed throughout a network of sign-ins, social platforms and accounts that hold a lot more than just our credit card details. Facebook gets a say in verifying who we are, science can alter our biology, and advances in AI are revolutionizing not only how we interact online but with the physical world around us. Understanding and defining ourselves is becoming confusing and chaotic, and we are starting to lose control.

In The Future of You, professional futurist Tracey Follows shows how digital money, digital voting, and digital identity will transform our personal freedoms over the coming decades. Yet she argues that we must find a way to embrace this new era of transformation while preserving our autonomy from state authorities, technology platforms and emergent systems. From health passports and bio-hacking to mind clones and virtual legacies beyond the grave, we need to understand these vital issues today so that we might design the future of our identity tomorrow.