Andart

The future of identity

The Future of Identity, a report by me and Nick Bostrom commissioned for the UK Office for Science.

We are not dealing with a very far future (just the next 15 years or so), so the challenges to identity are pretty "normal. Just the growth of online identity as a key part of our social identities, which means that we get embedded in technological identity metasystems, social spaces spanning time, space and legal borders, and that identity technology begins to automatically tie together different aspects of our identities whether we want it or not. At the same time we are developing individualized conceptions of illness and health, with the body at least partially an expression of our values and aspirations. Further on medical advances in biotechnology, life extension, and neurotechnology are going to make our lives increasingly science fictional... from our current, equally science fictional perspective.