How We Identify Ourselves in 2035 — Transparency Rules
Want to know anything about me? Sure thing, here’s my Trust Cloud
A postcard from Gracey about self-sovereign identity
June 17, 2035
There are two big differences between how you identify yourself and how we identify ourselves in 2035:
- Your world is increasingly concerned about privacy; in our world we celebrate openness, transparency and authenticity.
- In your world your data belongs to someone else; in our world every individual owns and manages their data and controls who they share it with.
This is how you identify yourself to your world:
- You have a birth certificate, which proves you exist and a travel document, which allows you to move around the world;
- You have other state-issued documents like a driver’s licence, social security card and a tax number;
- You have documents proving your education;
- You have medical records;
- You have social media profiles.
These forms of identity are all managed by third parties and can be revoked at any time. They’re also spread across many different databases and in many different paper forms. Basically, it’s pretty difficult to quickly know everything about you, reliably.
By 2035 we’d solved this problem by giving everyone and everything a unique identifier in the ledger. My birth certificate, passport, licenses, qualifications, medical records and social profiles are all linked to my identifier — My Trust Cloud. I alone can choose what’s visible publicly and I can selectively make sensitive information available to third parties on a need-to-know basis. No one can access my data unless I allow them to.
The Whole Person Index
Another part of each person’s identifier is their Whole Person Index. This number is always 100, for every single person on the planet. That’s because our right thinking has taught us that no individual is more important than another — we are all equal. What makes each person’s Index unique is the mix of elements in each Index. It’s a complex calculation, with thousands of variables. I’ll tell you more about it later, but for now, here are some of the datapoints that are constantly updated in each person’s Index. Most of the datapoints have a cumulative lifetime value as well as an in-the-moment value. You will notice that there are almost no datapoints that your world considers important, such as income, wealth, influence, size of home or cost of car:
- Level of Consciousness
- Emotional Intelligence Level
- Empathy Level
- Level of Clarity
- Level of Consistency
- Level of Fun and Enjoyment
- Ratio of Left and Right Brain Thinking
- Lifetime Value Created
- Lifetime Value Consumed
The ratios of each of these variables is always fully visible to everybody — it’s the only part of the Trust Cloud that cannot be hidden. While the Whole Person Index isn’t a replacement for the true essence of the individual, it does allow us to more quickly and accurately sum up an individual than you can in your world.
With the Trust Cloud as a single point of reference for everyone on the planet, we’ve solved so many of your day-to-day inconveniences:
- We never have to enter an address for online shopping — at the time of delivery, our exact location is sent to the delivery drone;
- We never have to apply for jobs and go to job interviews — whenever an employer needs someone, the ledger matches them to the ideal candidate;
- The insecurities and falsities of romantic relationships are completely removed, allowing us to enjoy much richer and deeper connections, when we choose;
- Discrimination and inequality no longer exist, because we no longer judge people on visible criteria like skin colour— instead people are seen as Whole Persons, revealing the true beauty in every individual.
Because we’re steeped in right thinking, no-one has any secrets — we know that we’re all connected as living entities in the biosphere, so why should we be concerned about what people know about us?
Summary
Our Trust Cloud is based on the principle that every individual ought to have the right to fully control his or her own identity. It balances transparency, fairness, and support of the commons with protection for the individual. The Whole Person Index reminds us that we are all equally important, while allowing us to quickly communicate to anyone interested in us how we step up in the world.
Questions to Explore
- What is self-sovereign identity? Ask Google
- What does ‘you are the product’ mean? Ask Google
- Why are names capitalised in legal documents? Ask Google
- What is the personal data economy? Ask Google
- What is the quantified self? Ask Google
- What is ID 2020? Ask Google
Postcards from 2035 is a series of profoundly simple interlinking ideas describing life in a highly desirable society, where everything and everyone is advanced, happy, intelligent and problem-free. It’s a blueprint of the world we need to create. The best thing you can do to help us get there is to share with your friends and get the conversation started with the questions this postcard has raised.
