Digital Identity; between evolution and crisis.
We humans have always experienced a separation between ourselves and nature. Ever since the beginning of modern society, we have increasingly sealed ourselves off from the (un)comforts of nature by designing solutions to escape it. Our entire being is to ensure we separate from nature as soon as possible, and this venture to be more than our temporality has created a concept that we still explore today: The concept of the self. Identity is one of the oldest concepts in human history, it is the understanding that every person living in any culture is a singularity and evolves with the use of new influences and reflection.
Archaeological findings show us that humans have been using jewellery and piercing dating from the year 40.000 BC. We can only assume we have been wearing other garments or outfits before that could be protected against the destructive cycle of time. With that said, humans have deliberately altered their own appearance throughout history for other reasons than keeping warm. Clothing was used to express our feelings, immerse into experiences or project our status. Our concept of identity is linked with colours, shapes and materials.
With the rapid emergence of technological innovations since the beginning of our information age, it has become standard to work, live and interact separately from our physical environment. The digital interaction between us is now abstract, invisible and intangible and with it, each and every one of us has built up an identity that we use to interact with each other. The sense of identity isn’t as strongly linked to the physical world as one might assume. We got more freedom to decide which personal aspects we show. The way of profiling ourselves and the modern practice of communication has enabled humans to construct their identity towards a desired goal or outcome. We have started to break up previously established senses of identity and muddle it playfully. Humans in digital society have constructed a replication of themselves, one consisting of non-material pixels, credentials and attributes. This entity lives parallel to our material lives and gives us the freedom to portray ourselves beyond social perception. This is what some might call the Digital Identity. The emergence of the digital identity has created a dichotomy to the concept of the self; the digital self and the physical self.
Daily digital activity has enabled users, governments and companies to create a detailed profile of who we are and what we are sensitive to. This is done with the P.I.I., the Personal Identifiable Information, a collection of attributes and elements. P.I.I. consists of our login name, passwords and new biometric identification technologies such as fingerprint, facial and iris scans.
As a singular user or as a part of a greater cluster, we are catalogued, targeted and analysed. Online platforms give us the opportunity to influence our own digital identity, establishing a profile for job hunting, displaying our connections or recording experiences to allude others to ourselves. If given space, our digital identity takes the shape of an avatar of choice, which could potentially be a better representation of the individual behind the screen. We are aware of the influence of the physical on the digital. Yet it seems inevitable that our digital identity, constructed or not, will start to affect our physical concept of self.
The transition of certain governmental or corporate infrastructures to a fully digital environment has started to affect the way the citizen of today interacts with the obligations towards society and with it, their responsibility within it. Nations and corporations collate driver’s licenses, personal security certificates, and other state-issued documents with identity. Facilitating companies who preserve and rely on our P.I.I. have made us partially give up our privacy and expose ourselves to interact and engage with others in virtue. The problem with this is that these organisations are required to approach identity very binary. Without possession of the recorded P.I.I., the user is excluded from certain experiences, organisations and services. This results in us being dependent on a plastic card or login credentials to prove we belong somewhere. Missing the required, certified document gives us no opportunity to present other ways of identifying in front of bureaucracy. Centralized control over our identity has made us dependent on the source of our own identity. We can be refused access to a service that should be acquainted enough with us to continue daily interactions.
This is not a negative advancement, we should expect a normative and strict approach to our digital identities. And we should want this interaction to be exclusive to us. On the contrary, we are heading towards an era where identity, as it has been established for many years, can break from the normative values and develop into something greater. I am alluding to the influence of the avatar, the digital representation of our identity, that can be customised, to remain modular and unbound to predefined rules. Initially starting as a little icon, avatars have now developed into fully 3-Dimensional characters.
The freedom of expression digital identity gives us makes portraying the self through alteration the standard instead of the anomaly. However, companies like Facebook and Google profited of giving us the space to develop our digital identity beyond normative values of identity and are now scrutinized for trying to converge the P.I.I. with our avatar. The identification paradigm is changing our sense of identity and our values of identity have finally met resistance.
Our digital identity is eluded from the realism of our physical selves, which forces us to experience our identity through a muddled lens and spend time identifying ourselves with a body that does not converge to ours. Should the representational right of the digital identity be protected? Should we start identifying the individual based on the attributes it has given to its persona? The more representational digital identity will become and also the upcoming merger of the verification processes to the digital identity will bring new ethical questions to the concept of the self. It does not only show how big the segregation between humans and nature has become.
To me, it seems we are heading to a confrontation with one of the oldest established concepts in identity within human society and with it, will start to inaugurate an identity crisis within humans itself.
The Digital Society School is a growing community of learners, creators and designers who create meaningful impact on society and its global digital transformation. Check us out at digitalsocietyschool.org.
