The Role of Identity in the Future Internet

The revolutionary context of these thoughts is the phase of human evolution that we are immersed in right now, which in relation to our current and ensuing generations will be as significant as the agrarian and industrial revolutions viz., the sustainability revolution.

It began over a century ago envisioned then and subsequently by people like Teilhard de Chardin, Rudolph Steiner, Martin Buber, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Robert “Bobby” Kennedy, Maria Montessori, E. F. Schumacher, A.D. Gordon, the Dalai Lama, Joanna Macy, the Findhorn leadership and community and on and on.

It is the phase in which human beings come full circle to the place existentially and, this time, consciously to where we began; at one with nature, ourselves and others.

It is the framework through which we discover that the organizing principle of right relations with all begins with a right relationship with myself i.e., who I am. This encompasses a clear and ever deepening understanding that who I am is the meaning of my life and the life I live is at once my identity now and my identity in aggregate, that is over time. Just a note – so we can drill even deeper in due course, many people and cultures have proposed that being human is a relational concept (Ubuntu, for example – a Southern African adage, mostly attributed to Archbishop Desmond Tutu, “u’muntu ngu muntu nga bantu” means a person is a person through other people) and thus who I am is also how I am reflected by those around me with whom I transact, interact and relate. More and more neuroscientific research, too much for this post to get into, is validating these cultural assertions and the notion of the social brain i.e., the fact that the brain has social chracteristics 'hardwired' into it, is becoming increasingly accepted.

The Internet is the 6th mass media (citing: Mobile as the 7th of the Mass Media – Tomi Ahonen www.futuretext.com) after print, recordings, cinema, radio and television. And it, and its successor, mobile the 7th mass media, are clearly the scaffolding we have discovered that permit us to accelerate ourselves into a state of sustainability before our semi- or unconscious, fear-driven selves (identities) render the species extinct.

Digital or virtual identity, hereafter Identity, is at one and the same time the organizing principle of the Internet and Mobile mass media. It starts as the basis for transactions with facets like ID numbers, passwords, credit card numbers and other identification information that enable transactions to occur simple and seamlessly. Identity then evolves into the basis for interactions with facets like profiles, preferences and other more personal information. We notice too that as we become more facile with the media (Internet and Mobile) so transactions become more interactive and the identity richness that we share with vendors increases. Finally, Identity evolves into the basis of relationships with facets like actions and behaviors, thoughts and emotions, skills, talents and competencies, values and beliefs and even fears, loves, vulnerabilities and spiritual experiences and orientations. When that happens, digital or virtual identity becomes the mirror and reflector of our physical or physical selves. We see this emerging even now for some of us. Imagine when in a decade from now a critical mass of humans have become digitally amphibious (Digital Amphibians (digitally amphibious) is a term coined by me and Dr. Choton Basu. It refers to people who are equally facile in the virtual and visceral i.e., digital and physical worlds); in other words are as fluent and dexterous in the virtual world as we are in the visceral world?

Virtual Identity will then be the reflector that enables us to become sustainable viscerally in our own lives and our relationships with ourselves, others and our environment. The more proficient we become in our virtual and visceral practice of being aware of our actions, behaviors, thoughts, emotions, and so on and how they support or detract from our being sustainable, the closer we get to being consciously human.

Let me be clear. By sustainable or green I mean sustainable in every aspect of being alive not just lowering our carbon footprint or using less energy from fossil fuels. By being sustainable I mean being peaceful and conserving, eliminating poverty, hunger, exploitation and abuse, raising health and education standards everywhere and learning to celebrate our rich, diverse life on this magical planet. By being sustainable I mean recognizing that there will always be evil, violence and conflict but they can be contained much as we contain disease and disaster rather than accepting them as the predominant norm.

Identity on the Internet therefore must be designed and architected to produce value for each and every one of us now and over our lifetimes in the 3 separate, yet simultaneous domains I spoke of earlier – transactions, interactions and relationships.

A simple law that I have developed pertains in each of these domains that allows us to manage towards and assess or rate the value we derive and/or aspire to. The law is simply that value (V) is the product of usefulness (U) and trust (T) or V= U x T.

To fully understand the relevance of this law and apply its meaning and consequential impact on every single human being, we need to design an evolutionary stack that attaches to the Internet that protects us from accidental and deliberate harm while enabling our personal and interpersonal development and growth towards sustainability i.e., in and of this world as full participants. As this stack evolves so the granularity of usefulness and trust evolve too until we have value given and derived from and to each according to their identity as it evolves ad infinitum.