The Future of You
Can Your Identity Survive 21st-Century Technology?
The original 2021 book
Tracey Follows
Originally published by Elliott & Thompson, 2021
ISBN: : 978-1-78396-545-8
What is technology doing to identity?
The book examines the opportunities and constraints that emerging technologies create for who we are: how identity is recognised, authenticated, recorded, inferred, expressed, altered, extended and potentially controlled.
It is not a book comparing or adjudicating between different identities. Its subject is the effect of technology on identity itself and what that means for the autonomy and agency of the individual.
As I wrote in 2021:
“The kind of identity that I want to talk about is a far broader, richer concept.”
And:
“I believe that the notion of identity has become more important than ever thanks to the disruptive effect of technology.”
The question running through the book is therefore not about identity politics or what we should think about particular identities, but what happens to identity when technology acts upon and alters it.
The future of identity
The book began with a personal experience.
In 2016, after my Facebook account was seemingly hacked, Facebook asked me to prove who I was. I uploaded my passport and the platform's automated system concluded that I wasn't me.
That experience raised a much larger question: who gets to decide who we are when identity is increasingly mediated by technology?
In the analogue world, much of what defined us existed physically and remained substantially under our control. But increasingly:
“We live much more of our lives online, relying on machines to verify, authenticate, validate and connect us under their terms of service rather than ours.”
Our identity is consequently no longer located in one place. It is distributed across platforms, databases, devices, institutions and networks.
As the introduction puts it:
“Technology is changing every aspect of who we are.”
The Future of You explores that transformation through seven stages or ways technology is changing identity.
1. KNOWING YOU
Who gets to establish that you are you?
Knowing You examines the digitisation and authentication of identity.
It looks at the changing relationship between the individual, the state and technology companies as legal identity becomes digital identity: from national identity systems and biometrics to e-residency, digital credentials, blockchain and self-sovereign approaches to identity.
The chapter asks who should create, control and authenticate an identity in a digital society — and whether technologies designed to make identification easier could simultaneously transfer authority over identity away from the individual.
As more of everyday life becomes digital, the chapter argues, the fundamental question is not simply whether we will have digital identities, but who will control them.
2. WATCHING YOU
When knowing who you are becomes knowing everything about you.
Technologies capable of identifying us can also be used to monitor us.
Watching You explores how identity systems, biometrics, surveillance, data collection and algorithmic inference can turn identification into observation and behavioural control.
Written during the Covid-19 pandemic, the chapter considers health credentials and digital certification alongside facial recognition, social credit, monitoring and predictive technologies.
It asks where legitimate identification ends and surveillance begins — particularly when access to work, travel, public space or services becomes dependent upon what a technological system knows or concludes about an individual.
The central tension is between collective utility and individual liberty.
Technology gives institutions unprecedented power to watch us. What mechanisms allow us to watch those institutions in return?
3. CREATING YOU
What happens when technology allows us to invent ourselves?
Creating You turns from identification by others towards expression by the self.
Social media, selfies, avatars, virtual worlds and synthetic identities give individuals unprecedented ability to construct, edit and perform different versions of themselves.
The chapter asks whether these digital selves are less authentic because they are consciously constructed — or whether technology is exposing something that was always true: that identity is contextual, fluid and continuously created.
As virtual technologies develop, the distinction between representing the self and inventing the self begins to disappear.
The chapter ends with perhaps its simplest statement of personal agency:
“I create me.”
4. CONNECTING YOU
What happens to identity when some of our relationships are with machines?
Our identities are shaped not only internally but through our relationships and interactions with others.
Connecting You examines what happens as some of those interactions become human-to-machine rather than human-to-human.
It moves from AI assistants and conversational systems to emotional AI, social robots, digital companions, virtual beings and artificial relationships.
If part of who we become emerges through the people we encounter, what happens when the “other” is an artificial intelligence designed to understand, respond to and perhaps even imitate us?
Could artificial relationships enrich human life — or could increasingly personalised machines eventually become little more than mirrors of ourselves?
The chapter asks whether meaningful connection requires another human being at all.
5. REPLACING YOU
If machines can extend your mind, where do you end and the machine begin?
Replacing You begins with the idea that mind, memory, reason and thought are central to personal identity.
It then asks what happens when technology enters that territory.
Automation changes the skills through which people have historically defined themselves. Artificial intelligence can take on intellectual tasks. Brain-computer interfaces promise direct connections between minds and machines. More speculative technologies suggest shared minds, expanded cognition and one brain potentially controlling multiple bodies.
The question becomes much larger than whether machines will replace people's jobs.
What happens when technology begins to replace, extend or connect aspects of the mind itself?
And if several minds or machines become interconnected, can the individual remain meaningfully individual?
6. ENHANCING YOU
How much of who you are is contained in your body?
If the previous chapter explores the mind, Enhancing You turns to the physical self.
It examines the growing ability to capture and interpret biological identity through genomics, health data and wearable technologies, alongside the possibilities created by implants, genetic intervention, human enhancement and transhumanism.
The chapter explores morphological freedom: the possibility that technology may increasingly allow people to alter their bodies and biological capabilities rather than simply accept what nature has given them.
That offers extraordinary possibilities for autonomy and human development. But the same technologies could create new forms of biological inequality or enable institutions to exercise unprecedented control over physical identity.
Technology may liberate human identity from some of the constraints of biology.
It may also give others new power to determine what kinds of humans are desirable.
7. DESTROYING YOU
Does identity have to end when the body dies?
The final chapter examines perhaps the ultimate technological challenge to identity: death.
Destroying You explores longevity, life extension, consciousness, memory, mindfiles, digital remains and the possibility of preserving versions of a person beyond their biological lifespan.
If memories, characteristics, communications and representations of a person can continue to exist after death, what exactly has disappeared?
And if technology ultimately enables consciousness or identity to be transferred, reproduced or recreated, how much could change before we could no longer call that entity the same person?
The chapter also considers the practical problem of digital inheritance: distinguishing the assets someone leaves behind from the identity that created them.
It ends with a possibility that seemed speculative in 2021 but is becoming increasingly difficult to dismiss:
A version of “you” may have more of a future than you think.
A distributed, changing self
Across all seven chapters, one idea recurs: technology is making identity increasingly distributed.
What once appeared to be a relatively coherent physical, legal, professional and personal identity can now exist in multiple forms and contexts.
In the conclusion, I proposed thinking about identity as polymorphic code — capable of mutating while keeping its original algorithm intact.
Different data might represent us in different contexts. Avatars might express us. Credentials might authenticate us. Intelligent assistants might extend us. Digital legacies might preserve us.
The challenge is maintaining continuity, autonomy and agency across those different manifestations.
As I wrote at the end of the introduction:
“It is time to design the future of identity in the way that we want.”
That was the central argument of The Future of You in 2021.
It remains the challenge today.
What Readers Said
On publication, The Future of You received positive responses from readers and people working across technology and artificial intelligence.
“Far too often, technology researchers focus on what their exciting new inventions can do without pausing to think about the impact they will have on people or society. 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. A valuable and important contribution to the debate about the future of technology and society.”
Michael Wooldridge, Professor of Computer Science, University of Oxford; author of The Road to Conscious Machines: The Story of AI
Reader reviews
“If you have any form of digital presence then this is essential reading.”
★★★★ — Reader review, May 2021
“This has to be one of the most interesting books I've ever read.”
★★★★★ — Reader review, March 2021
“Tracey Follows provides a much-needed, human-centric lens on emerging technologies... For any innovators, taking this balanced view is a must.”
★★★★★ — Reader review, July 2021
“Well researched, informative and insightful.”
★★★★★ — Reader review, March 2021
“It's a relaxed style that's both easy and pleasant to read, letting the reader focus their effort on assimilating the ideas into their mindset. An enjoyable and worthwhile read.”
★★★★★ — Reader review, March 2021
“Amazing read that is highly recommended. Get this if you want new thinking on the future of identity and the answer to who you are... and will be in the future.”
★★★★★ — Reader review, April 2021
“The book is ideal for anyone who is interested in identity management, data privacy and social media.”
★★★★ — Reader review, April 2021
“Started reading this last night and couldn't put it down! Finished it this morning.”
★★★★★ — Reader review, November 2021
Listen to The Future of You
The original print edition of The Future of You is no longer in commercial distribution.
The audiobook remains available to listen to through The Future of You podcast.
LISTEN TO THE BOOK ON SPOTIFY → AUDIOBOOK
[LISTEN TO THE BOOK ON APPLE → AUDIOBOOK
The audiobook provides access to the original 2021 text and the questions that formed the starting point for Tracey Follows' subsequent work on identity, agency and the relationship between humans and machines.
Five Years On
In 2026, I returned to the questions first raised in The Future of You with a separate follow-up:
The Future of You: Five Years On
From Machine-Readable to Me
Five Years On revisits the technologies, predictions and questions explored in the original book and asks what happened next.
It follows the journey from the machine-readable self towards a new question: what remains distinctively human as intelligent machines become increasingly capable of reading, representing, predicting and acting for us?
EXPLORE THE FUTURE OF YOU: FIVE YEARS ON →KINDLE
Publication information
Title:The Future of You
Subtitle:Can Your Identity Survive 21st-Century Technology?
Author: Tracey Follows
First published: 2021
Original publisher: Elliott & Thompson
ISBN:: 978-1-78396-545-8
Format:Hardback
Publishing rights subsequently reverted to Tracey Follows. The original print edition is no longer in commercial distribution.
Author:Tracey Follows
Audiobook:Listen on Spotify
Follow-up:The Future of You: Five Years On : From Machine-Readable to Me:chine
