Multidimensional Identity in the Digital Age
Are we unraveling the quantum potential of our digital selves?
https://open.spotify.com/episode/7uvdjv9IrceP37AkTcU5hW?si=a082c3cca4e84e12
The latest Digital Pilgrims Think Tank podcast episode, “Multidimensional Identity,” offers an essential exploration of the intersection of technology, society, and self-understanding: As we increasingly navigate our lives online, understanding the transformative effects of the digital age on our identities and relationships is crucial.
The episode delves into the concept of multidimensional identity, challenging traditional understandings of self-definition in the 21st century. By drawing upon historical perspectives and the potential role of quantum physics, the podcast provides valuable insights into the complexities of identity in the digital era.
This episode is an enlightening and thought-provoking examination of identity in the digital world.
Press play today and join the conversation on the future of self-understanding in our technology-driven lives.
Read the episode transcript here:
Multidimensional Identity
The question of what changes first, individual people or the systems of community and values that unite them, may not have an answer. It is certainly possible to observe that in each historical moment, individuals build their identity based on different factors, including cosmogony, social, political, and economic relationships, technological developments, scientific theories, and geographical distribution. In other words, humans build their identities based on our relationships with the environment and each other.
One’s identity has been the central axis of philosophical thought from its very beginnings. We can also identify stances related to this issue developed by the social sciences, including sociology, anthropology, and even linguistics. We can use these perspectives to think about identity as a social construct that we build for ourselves in relationship to others. In addition to the classic questions (which still lack definitive answers) about how and with what aims we carry out this construction and about the value of identities defined nowadays, another question arises: what is the role of the Digital Environment and how does its existence affect identity?
In their Dictionary of Discourse Analysis published in 2005, the analysts Charaudeau and Maingueneau cite the “principle of otherness,” which includes some ideas about this issue. According to this principle, the starting point for one’s identity is the perception of difference from another person. Becoming aware of that other is necessary to finding what distinguishes us as individuals. However, that relationship between us and everyone else is not limited to difference because, returning to the sphere of communication, for the process to work, we must have at least one code in common. If we understand that people change according to the historical period and that they are a reflection of how they understand reality in a given historical moment, we can analyze the new ideas that arise from the evolution of technology and the consequences it has on reality. In other words, we can study how individuals build their identity in each historical moment.
Many people nowadays point to the prevalence of individualist constructions of identity that involve identifying with consuming and producing content on social networks that revolve around the individual. If we think of it this way, we will not find much meaning in the collective gatherings that occur in the Digital Environment. Like in Renaissance communities, the construction of a digital identity also takes place collectively, though in a new way.
Through the network and within it, individuals come together and collaborate like in brotherhoods, but with the scope and power of mass society. This is one method we can see clearly in communities of productive knowledge in which the search for new understanding is the main motivation for the group. Their practices and customs are oriented toward the evolution of knowledge. Self-management, self-assessment, and mastery are the three pillars that hold up communities of productive knowledge and are what allow them to produce results that are organic and more precise when it comes to creating new solutions to the problems that arise. At the same time, these communities have a broader reach thanks to digital technology. A community can be made up of people of all ages and from all around the world.
Until digital technology was developed and then recognized as a habitable environment, the only environments we knew were natural and material. Given its characteristics, the Digital Environment confronts us with an array of abilities never before experienced. For example, while Renaissance brotherhoods and digital communities both include productive organization held up by similar values, digital technology frees members of the group from having to coincide in time. While brotherhoods shared a workshop or room where they physically met, it is possible today to come together in a single virtual space at different times.
The Digital Environment exists beyond our individual desire to connect to it through a device. But this is not the case just because the environment is omnipresent and atemporal in itself; instead, it functions as a platform for people to build their identities in that way. If quantum computing taught us that a bit can be 1, 0, or both at the same time, we can understand the identity process in the Digital Environment as a quantum potentiality. People are no longer restricted by the opportunity of being “in the right place at the right time,” like in the Natural World. Now access is total and on demand. This allows us to explore many more interests, embark on journeys of thought and act upon them, and, most importantly, connect to people who share each of those interests.
Our identity explodes multidimensionally: we can be doctors, writers, students, and gamers at the same time. However, we must differentiate between what we tend to call “a person’s facets” and what we are talking about here: a person’s dimensions. It is not that an individual distributes their time between their medical practice, their literary writing, the course they are taking, and their video games but rather that each of these activities is a dimension of the identity that is constantly active in the Digital Environment. This happens even though the person is not interacting and feeding the activity of each of these networks or platforms with their body; these networks and platforms do not need a presence in real time.
Let us consider an exceptional person, like Leonardo Da Vinci was in his time. Can we really define him just as an artist, even with the broadness that word allows? Da Vinci was a scientist, anatomist, inventor, musician, and engineer, among other things, at the same time. In the 15th century, he managed to bring together the knowledge of different disciplines and make exceptional advances. He was exceptional, but why? What made him extraordinary was that his genius was expressed transversally. What Da Vinci achieved centuries ago by his own means is more accessible to everyone today thanks to digital technology. We can all build a multidimensional identity.
When we talk about a “Renaissance man” in everyday speech, we are referring to a person who does many different things, who develops their activities in different areas. While Renaissance humanism ensured a comprehensive education, our current Zeitgeist favors constant education. Before, an individual studied for a certain number of years in order to reap the benefits of that education for the rest of their life. Now the canon pushes for a dynamic education. The speed at which knowledge evolves requires people to integrate not only productive capacity but also educational capacity into their daily routines. Flexibility, multiple abilities, the capacity for constant learning, and the possibility of defining oneself in different ways have become key assets in the 21st century. In this regard, identity as we conceive of it today is even more ambiguous than it used to be: a person’s social, professional, and productive dimensions are all active simultaneously. Which of Da Vinci’s dimensions were at play in his studies of the human body? Was it the artist, the forensic researcher, or the mathematician that guided charcoal across paper?
The possibility that technology offers us of being many things at the same time, of multiplying our identity in different spheres and projecting them in time, confronts us with a new way of existing. The mere exercise of trying to present that reality to the labor market involves a frequent challenge. And although we are still defining what identity means in the world to come, it is worth examining some of the implications of the multidimensionality presented by the quantum age. Quantum mechanics brought with it a view of the universe as dynamic and indeterminate. Without getting into specific details of physics, it is worth mentioning the principle of the identity of indiscernibles proposed centuries ago by Leibniz. The 17th-century philosopher posited that if two objects cannot be differentiated, they are the same object. The existence and behavior of electrons defies this principle. The quality of sameness between elementary particles questions the concept of “object” or “thing,” as well as the concept of space. If space is what keeps everything from becoming one in a material environment, time is what stops everything from happening at the same time. In an environment like the digital one, which does not require time, that restriction does not exist. Everything could happen at the same time.
In the next episode:
Discover how quantum physics can help us understand our new identities and the ways in which we detach from space and time. Can we go a step further?
Digital Pilgrims is a podcast based upon the book “Digital Pilgrims. Towards a Quantum Humanity”.
