The Future of You

Tracey Follows

From Shelf: Favourite books I read in 2021

A fascinating & urgent exploration of how technology will transform personal identity in the twenty-first century to a self that can be created, managed, even owned.

In the future, how many identities will you have? How many do you want? Digital technology is causing us to think differently about who we are and who we could become, but with the right knowledge we can turn this incredible capacity to our advantage. 'Who am I?' is one of the most fundamental questions of all. But it is becoming increasingly difficult to answer as technology enables us to negotiate and create many different versions of ourselves. In our digital, data-driven world, Facebook gets a say in verifying who we are, science can alter our biology, and advances in AI are revolutionizing not only how we interact online but with the physical world around us. Understanding and defining ourselves is becoming confusing but, as this fascinating book argues, it is possible to embrace this new era of transformation while preserving our autonomy. In The Future of You, Professional futurist Tracey Follows shows how our personal freedoms and potential will be transformed over the coming decades. From health passports, bio-hacking and relationships with machines to mind clones, digital voting and virtual legacies beyond the grave, we need to understand these vital issues today so that we might design the future of our identity tomorrow. 'This fascinating book explores the way that emerging technologies such as AI might affect the nature of personal identity and personhood. It paints an intriguing, thought-provoking, and occasionally disturbing picture.' Michael Wooldridge, author of The Road to Conscious