Digital Identity: Are you in control? | Eliot Wood | TEDxUniversityofEssex

the great existential questions of Life Who Am I who are you these are questions that we ask ourselves throughout our lives and to be honest the answers are always changing perhaps a better question is how is this changing and do we have any sense of control or ownership over this process when I was studying my dissertation at the University of Essex around consumer behavior and authentic influence I made it my mission in life to find a way to give consumers a way to get power back over their digital assets this is why alongside one of

my best friends and co-founders I started whisper an app that allows anyone to get paid to become an influencer and take control over their digital assets and work with Brands and Advocate them in a way that works for them and over the last year alone we've paid tens of thousands of pounds to hundreds of regular people giving them a sense of ownership over their digital assets but this hasn't always been the been the case or being able to fully come to terms so today I want to talk to you about how attention and the way

that we form our identity has changed over time and how this has been and will continue to be driven by technology but before we go into this timeline there are two very important things to understand first of all is the very concept of identity it's a thing that we all feel that we intuitively understand and at its most simple it's knowing who's who and what's what I know who I am I know who you are you know who I am and I think I know who you think I am and so on identity is a

group project but how do we do this well in modern capitalism we use consumption as a tool to craft identities we buy brands that have meanings and we put them onto ourselves and this requires that we have a really high level of understanding of what any given brand means so that we can be seen to be using it in the right ways this is something that we're always consciously and subconsciously analyzing about ourselves and those around us it's why you probably see politicians always rolling up their sleeves when they go to factories and all in

all this allows us to use consumption as a way to break free of the pre-existing definitions of identity things like sex occupation class gender and then on this process the second thing we have to understand is how attention works now brands are always there to help us in our identity seeking process but first of all they have to win our attention now this is easier done than said and I did get that the right way around Brands can hack our minds because we all have the same lizard brains we basically have a habit and reward

system that can be hacked so that they can win our attention and then when they've won our attention and they've gathered more data about our likes our dislikes who we are and who we want to be they could be in a place to humanize themselves in their products so that we add them into our identity project now this has created a race to the bottom over the last few years a race to the bottom to get our attention so that these Brands can Define who we are and help us and that's what I'll be talking

about over the course of pre-web web 1 web 2 and web 3. now in the days before um pre-web there wasn't very much data available about John and Sam John and Sam and the people that will be using as our examples today so John grew up in a small village if I get closer to the button John grew up in a small village his identity was largely ascribed to him it's a product of his birth and it's mainly formed around his conservative and you know um and Rich upper class family as such it doesn't really

change that much it's quite stationary and unflexible and next up we have Sam Smith Sam grew up with a family with very relaxed values and over the course of his life he's been able to build his sense of identity and uh in in the pre-web days there wasn't very much data available at either of them so Brands had to lean on what we what we built our identities upon and what that's a sense of subculture and Counter Culture um some of these are the most powerful in the UK you've got the likes of punks in

the 70s or new Romantics in the 80s and if you're wondering what a new romantic is here's a picture of my mum doesn't she look fantastic she built her sense of identity over time she had to go out and buy clothes she had to make a lot of the clothes that she couldn't buy she had to buy the right magazines consume the right TV programs and the right albums and she'd have to go to specific places to show off this sense of identity she'd have to go to places like the blitz Club in London that's

why she's known as a blitz kid now for Brands this meant that they could lean on these counter cultures to put their brands into our identity projects this required compelling and really good storing Telly and really good adverts and it led to products like Dr Martens the original Punk boot and this gave birth to the Golden Age of admin Sam's free to become a punk and Joe punk-like things in any way he wishes but John John isn't maybe that's because he's adopted the family values that his family have put upon him or maybe it's because

he feels like he can't break free and wear them because he might be punished for breaking out of the mold but then came along web one and web one web one is basically what they call the read-only web now the read-only web is basically like a book or a magazine or encyclopedia that's all you can do it's got limited interaction it's decentralized and built in open protocols but all of that's quite technical so this is a time where it wouldn't really affect John and Sam that much because they probably wouldn't be using it they were

more likely affected by things like MTV who gave them culture in their living room but in the early 2000s some really clever people at Facebook and Google created web 2 and aspects of web 2 they basically wrapped these uh decentralized protocols with easy to use interfaces that allowed anyone to be able to use them they can create profiles shared messages upload photos basically everything we do on the web today this allowed Sam and John the ability to experiment freely Sam could dive in and out of new subcultures and try things that are a moment's notice

but more importantly so could John John was finally free to experiment with who he was and he didn't have to worry about his family or lack of money from an inhibiting from doing so but as we know all three things come at a cost in the case of Sam and John they became the product it's their data that was collected for these free services which is then sold on or they were sold hyper targeted adverts now over the last few years this has become an increasingly Insidious products and algorithms have been created who are designed

to attack those subsystems of the brain the reward and the Habit systems and they hire attention Engineers whose sole purpose is to implore principles from casinos into your phones now this is so effective that Studies have shown that the more you use your phone the more fragmented your attention becomes so if you find yourself picking up your phone and then opening an app and closing it only to opening it again that's because they've done their job well so if anyone's dropped off on my talk so far it's not my fault it's your phones foreign so

what has this done it's created a universe in a world where a few select people and a few select companies know John and Sam more intimately than they know themselves they know their likes they know their dislikes they know who they are and they know who they want to be the effect of this over time means that subcultures have come integrated into culture and it's made culture more homogeneous and subculture is more fragmented it's not to say that they don't exist they do it's just that they're physical manifestations are in Decline and that's partly because

they're so easily accessible and there's no real cultural imperative to invest anymore unlike my mum they don't have to go out and do all these things to become a punk they can buy clothes and then they're a punk the next day for Amazon or they can consume punk-like Culture by going on YouTube or Netflix or Spotify all in all this has assimilated these subcultures into wider culture a much faster rate than ever before and you have words like famine like yes Queen are a part of wider culture because you know we're so used to watching

like RuPaul's Drag Race and all these programs there's no barriers to entry anymore and for a modern generation this has created a world where they use these fringes of subculture to build their identities it's no longer called to be part of a group anymore it's called to be individually you and perhaps the best example of this is a guy called Francis Bourgeois I don't know if anyone knows him but he's known as the train guy on Instagram so he's a trainspotter he's become famous for it and he loves it and this is his Hobby and

this is part of his identity it's Unique it's something that probably wouldn't have been called maybe 10 15 years ago but now it is he has deals with Gucci he's friends with Joe Jonas and he flies all over the world he is uniquely himself but this has created a problem for Brands where they once relied on these subcultures to integrate products they now rely on data and they rely on Automation and only a few of these key players in the tech world have this information freely available and over time we as consumers have become less

and less trustful of this these adverts and they've also become more expensive for the brands that run them so this has led to a world where brands are now co-opting us as consumers and content creators in the same way that used to co-opt these counter cultures so they're using platforms and startups and agencies like mine whisper because we can connect them to influences and us as consumers and create content that's more trustworthy because we as people have our fingers on the pulse usually way more than a brand can a perfect example of this is Tick

Tock is anyone here trying to make a tech talk before that's really hard work it's really time consuming and Tick Tock doesn't really care about who you are doesn't care how many followers you have how much money you have cares about one thing that's good content that's really really hard for Brands to make especially if they don't have their fingers on the pulse this is created a world where now Instagram and Tech talk are actually fighting for us as consumers and content creators they're launching billion dollar funds that keep us incentivized to be on the

platform but what's the relevance to John and Sam here well this is an indication of what's to come we're going towards an increasingly consumer-led marketing World which cares about us and our data rights influencer marketing for example is 16 billion dollar industry alone and by 2025 is expected to be worth 52 billion dollars but where this gets really exciting is web 3. now there's no widely agreed upon definition of web3 but what it does represent is decentralized protocols that allowed for the building of things like economies and platforms that no single entity controls so John

can free be free to postpile what he likes without worrying it's going to be taken down and sound could be free to send money to his friends without a need for a bank now where web3 kind of has its best Innovation is web 2 made us the product web 3 will make us the content owner so we'll be taking some of the power back a small caveat though I'm not here to say if this will happen when it will happen or how it would technically happen because that's a whole different kettle of fish but what

I am here to say is how this could be really beneficial to us as consumers that's one of the best examples of this is uh gaming so there are games out there at the moment like axi infinity and what they allow you to do is download the game and play it and as a player you get rewarded for playing the game you get tokens these tokens Can then be chipped in for cash at any point this creates a symbiotic relationship whereby you and the brand are entwined if you invite more friends and advocate for the

platform more more people come on the more you play the better the brand does and the Brand's incentivized to look after you the consumer and the content creator because the more features it adds and the more it actually goes to your requests the the better it will do it creates this symbiotic relationship where both succeed so perhaps this will help create a world where consumers are no longer viewed as just another number in a spreadsheet or a database but more is something that are looking for the same thing as brands are and a really powerful

sentiment where this comes in is privacy and the exchange of information so in web 3 you can create wallets like metamaster available at the moment and these store all your personal identified viable information they store your cryptocurrencies and a lot of the data you go onto these platforms with now what's really powerful is you don't have to log in and create all these various profiles anymore you can just use your wallet and that protects your information and that also means that you can give this information out in return for tokens again which can be incentivized

and if you want to cut off that access to your data anymore then great it's just like canceling the direct debit you're in control you get rid of it well this is especially powerful for Sam and John is the fact that they are no longer going to be tracked and there's the tracking ability of Brands and platforms to be increasingly harder so if John wants to access things his parents might not approve of or his government might not approve of then that's no problem he can do this in full freedom this becomes really powerful in

places like metaverses metaverse is a term that many of us have probably heard of but what does it mean well a metaverse is simply a 3D rendering of the web or it's a virtual interactive experience that can be accessed by any mobile device and it can be augmented reality or virtual reality compatible as well so you get a really more immersive experience you might be thinking of Facebook because they recently changed their name to meta but they didn't create these Med verses have been around for ages and again one of the best example is gaming

so things like Minecraft fortnite um these are games are out there and they're allowing the younger generation to create these fully achieved digital identities free from their physical ones youngest consumers are spending hundreds of millions a year on decking out their characters with skins and customizations that make them unique to them online now if you think that web 2 really increased the imperative to work on your identity and really increase the simulation of subcultures into wider culture imagine what web3 will do you can become anything you want at a push of a button you no

longer have to wait around anymore John can be free to break out to become whoever he wants that's really powerful you might be thinking this is a little bit dystopian at the same time because who wants to spend their whole life online well think about John he might live in a world where he can't be who he wants he might not be able to afford to be who he wants or think about Sam Sam might not be able to go to events because he can't afford them or he might not be able to see family

members All Around the World in web 3 they don't have to worry about this they can instantly change and take part in these subcultures now web 2 is under threat and it's on web3 is under threat and it's under Threat by the existing incumbent players of web 2 they're building metaverses that their own and this acts as a threat to us in our rights for data of the future and they're not only just inventing these new metaverses they're inventing ones that um are driven off Hardware that they're creating so they're effectively hedging their bets so

what can you do with all this information as consumers in the meantime well in the short run you can think about your attention and where you spend it and your data you can put your phone down and only pick it up consciously you can browse in private you can stop listening exclusively to ads and listen more to your friends and your communities that you care about because they're the ones that have your best intentions at heart but in the long run you've got a choice do you go through a web 3 world which is value

and privacy and your data rights and your ability to become a breakaway character free of your physical world or do you go for a re-wrapping of the status quo web 3 which is really web 2 rebranded that's up to you the consumer you have the power not only with where you spend your money but where you spend your attention thank you [Applause]