What happens when identity stops being something we declare and becomes something machines infer?

In this specially assembled edition of The Future of You, Tracey Follows returns to four conversations that reveal how the self is becoming machine-readable.

Artist and AI pioneer Holly Herndon explains why anything captured in media can become training data. Journalist Kashmir Hill traces the rise of searchable facial recognition and the danger of infrastructure built for security being used for exclusion. 

Biometrics entrepreneur Andrew Bud explains why the face is becoming the root of trust in the digital economy. Investigative journalist Byron Tau reveals the expanding world of data brokers and the invisible digital exhaust emitted by our devices.

Together, these conversations show how identity is becoming an ambient layer assembled from faces, voices, gestures, locations, transactions, relationships and inference.

The machine-readable self is not a future scenario. It is already here.

Tracey also connects these conversations to her work on the Database Self and the Database Brand, exploring how people and organisations are increasingly interpreted by systems.

The question is no longer simply: who are you?

It is: who, or what, gets to interpret you?

Contributors

Holly Herndon
Kashmir Hill
Andrew Bud
Byron Tau

Explore Tracey’s wider research and advisory work at futuremade.group.

Watch The Future of You: Reframed on YouTube @FutureofYou

Visit: 

→ Me:chine World and essays: me-chine.com

→ Podcast archive The Future of You

→ Audiobook series (weekly chapters) Introduction