Exploring Liminalities
Creating Spaces for Unlimited Futures

Identity: the existential issue of the century

26 October 2023 (Thursday), 15:00-15:20, inspire
Speaker
CEO , Futuremade
Visiting Professor of Digital Futures & Identity , Staffordshire University
Session Description

Forget biotechnology, forget climate change, forget nuclear war, *the* existential issue of our time is actually Identity. Identity is at the core of all of the conflict in the world right now. We used to debate whether personal identity resided in the mind or the body but now there is a third dimension that has the power and potential to obliterate the concept of personal identity which is causing an existential crisis socially and individually. The biology of the self and the psychology of the self has been joined by the technology of the self. And that technology is altering what it means to be a 'person' and what it means to be this person or that person specifically. Authenticity is dead and we are now in the era of Profilicity, which means our identity is now data-based and digital - we are copied, posted, pixelated, and shared across the internet across multiple identities. This paper will examine this shift, using CLA and scenarios to illustrate the shift, and make recommendations on how we can reclaim our autonomy and preserve the integrity of our identity in the 21st Century.