Identity duality: trust and preference

There has been an idea bouncing around tech circles for a while now. It’s about online identity and how we should return control of it to individuals.Right now, a lot of our digital identity is controlled by large corporations who profit enormously from that control. For reasons of fairness, privacy, and control, there’s an argument from the EU and others to take control from these large corps and give it back to individuals.

Trust and preference

When we’re talking about identity here we’re really talking about two different things, which are often confused in this debate.One is about trust: are you who you say you are. This is important for accessing everything from email and social networks to bank accounts and government services. A trusted online identity is a vital component for many digital services, with different levels of verification required for different tiers of service.The other is about preference. Based on who you are, what you have viewed and consumed, and the behaviour of those in your network, what might you want to consume in the future. This is the information that is so valuable to brands and retailers, and hence to the social networks.The argument for repatriating control of this preference information to individuals has been criticised for being somewhat ‘Ayn Rand-ian’. It is characterised as being all about the preference information: “Put property rights on that data and allow it to be traded. Free markets solve everything etc.”

Beyond commercialisation

There would be a lot of merit to this criticism but for two things. Firstly, the trade in this preference data has already been commercialised. Right now the rightful owners of this data are excluded from the market, profiting from it not at all and without any meaningful control over its use. Free markets may not solve everything, but a free market is infinitely better than the current one which is rigged against the consumer.Secondly, the financial capital bound up in preference data is inextricably linked to the social capital that creates the trust in our identity. The 'me' that posts and shares is the same 'me' that votes and banks, and the same 'me' that shops and clicks. Separating the three across the myriad ways that we log in and out of payment engines, social networks, shopping sites and more is near impossible. The various threads may not form a totally coherent whole but they nonetheless represent a single, if fuzzy, me.The argument that I should control this social aspect of my online identity has nothing to do with commercial gain. It’s a simple principle of human rights.Personally, I think there’s a valid argument to me made that we should be the ones to profit from choosing to share our own preference data. But the real argument for repatriating identity to individuals is that we should have the right to control who we are and how we present ourselves, whatever the domain.

Why The Future of Digital is Physical

I often have the same conversations many times over. Sometimes they’re with other people, on air or answering questions at a talk. Sometimes they are entirely in my head, as part of a blog post or just a thought process. It means I’m never quite sure what I’ve said and to whom. So forgive me if this is an idea I’ve shared before, but I couldn’t find reference to it on my blog.There’s a belief in the minds of many of the more mature that young people have given themselves over to the digital realm. That they are more interested in the screen than the sky and that this is somehow inherently damaging. And that they engage indiscriminately without thought to future consequence.Personally, I think this is nonsense on a number of levels.

Digital augments the physical

Firstly, my own observations of the young people I work with and how they use technology suggests that its primary function is to organise physical engagement — of every type. Why have services like Snapchat and Instagram become so popular? Because they encourage the sharing of your current real-world experience. Facebook is increasingly dominated by videos and photos. Tinder? Well, its success speaks for itself. These tools are being used to organise future real-world experiences and share the ones they have already had.There is an argument about the narcissistic, show-off culture that drives us to use these tools. And one that says we would be better off enjoying the experience than constantly trying to share it from behind a screen. But to say that young people use digital tools as an alternative to the physical? I think that is increasingly wrong.Young people’s TV consumption is falling as they consume more digital media on mobile devices and we have to see this as primarily a good thing: they are moving from a passive activity to a more active one, albeit one that carries risks.

Privacy conscious

Secondly, there is the charge that the young engage indiscriminately online, sharing personal information without a thought for risks. Again I have to say the behaviours I’ve witnessed and the success of private messaging services suggest this is not true.There was absolutely a generation who were young when social media was an absolute novelty and who embraced it without a second thought. That generation has probably shared a lot of stuff they’d now like to retrieve.But the generation that followed them is a lot more savvy. Hence the success of Snapchat and less public messaging services like WhatsApp and their diminished use of Facebook. They are careful about what they share, and where they share it.

Merging worlds

So what does this say about the future?Despite the so-far limited success of augmented reality (Google Glass etc), I believe strongly that we will increasingly see the physical and digital worlds merge as more items are connected and our interfaces to them become more natural and human. Our digital interactions will become more subtle: conversation and gestures, colours and vibrations, head up, not head down. We will become better at receiving, filtering and responding to information via multiple sensory channels. We’re capable: just look at how we deal with all of the information flying at us when driving a car at speed.Young people aren’t lost in some cyber netherworld. They’re mapping out our increasingly physical, digital future.