In today’s connected world, we’re heading deeper into total interaction with machines. We’re nearly at the point of being always on the grid, our digital twin marching happily to the rhythms of the information age while we try to go about our meaty business.
Are we being asked to bid farewell to our former selves and give up any sense of independence from the Borg? For decades, I’ve pondered the question of whether there was a way to take the good from tech and leave the rest behind. I’ve yet to come coming up with an entirely satisfactory answer. It seems a slippery slope, something on the order of acceptance by Native Americans of alcohol offered by English settlers. Take a bit of tech and the rest comes after you.
Think of your representation as a digital object, a twin, in the parlance of the industry, a digital twin.
You start off with Name, Rank, and Serial Number, but pretty soon a digital record begins to form, acquiring more and more interesting things about you — like age, address(es), language, education, employment history, photos taken and viewed, heart rate, group memberships, steps walked, Web pages viewed, GPS coordinates, items purchased, searches made, criminal record, service subscriptions, phone call log, loan history, financial status, legal entanglement, last knitting pattern used. All those electronic elements…
