Congratulations to certificate grad Tracey Follows! Her new book, The Future of You: Can Your Identity Survive 21st Century Technology? is now available. Check out the press release below for more details.

THE FUTURE OF YOU

Can Your Identity Survive 21st Century Technology?

Tracey Follows

Publication date: 18 March 2021

Price: £14.99 hardback / ebook

ISBN 13: 978-1-78396-545-8

 

In the future, how many identities will you have? How many do you want?

‘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. 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.

‘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

Discussion points

  • Big Tech versus Little You: how you can take back control of your identity in an online world
  • Digital technology is causing us to think differently about who we are and who we could become
  • Citizens of countries will soon be citizens of companies as Big Tech now gets permission to govern us from the cloud
  • Is health passporting the trojan horse for a digital ID system either globally or in the UK?
  • Why a digital ID system might be good for the economy, society, and the future you
  • The Great Reset is inevitable, what measures can each of us take to turn it to our advantage?

Discussion points continued …

  • How Covid has created a virtual-first generation who will change our world forever
  • In the future, how many identities will you have? How many do you want?
  • Post-Corona kids have already had their identities created for them online – what next for this post-pandemic generation?
  • Tomorrow’s relationships between humans and machines will be synthetic – but authentic too
  • The Internet of Bodies is here: will you share your biological data for the common good?
  • Too busy to attend a meeting? Send your avatar instead
  • How will we use digital media to craft our identities in the future?

TRACEY FOLLOWS is a professional futurist identifying the future trends that will shape our world. Her clients have included Telefonica, Google, Sky, Farfetch, Conde Nast and Virgin. She has spoken at UN HQ in New York, delivered her TedX at the UK Foreign & Commonwealth Office and closed at events such as Think With Google.

She writes her own contributor column in Forbes and her opinions are regularly sought by national media.  She was an Adage ‘Woman to Watch’ 2017, Women in Marketing Award Winner 2016, and Inaugural Creative Strategy Jury President at Cannes Lions 2019. In 2018, she was listed by Business Cloud as a Trailblazing Woman in Tech.  She is a member of the Association of Professional Futurists, World Futures Studies Federation and a Fellow of the RSA.