Identity and Agency: 2020 and Beyond
Having spent much of Q4 2019 supporting the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation and the T3 Innovation Network (specifically Pilot Project 10: Empowering the American Student and Worker), I felt it appropriate to take a moment to reflect on this notion of Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI). This term (SSI) is something I’ve admittedly internalized, and very often taken for granted, given its ubiquity in many of the circles I navigate day-to-day.
An established leader in this space, Sovrin, offers the following:
Sovrin defines SSI as a term used to describe the digital movement that recognizes an individual should own and control their identity without the intervening administrative authorities. SSI allows people to interact in the digital world with the same freedom and capacity for trust as they do in the offline world.
While I find this to be a rather uninspiring definition, it does seem to capture the latest shared sentiment. My interpretation, (related and surely no more inspiring) has come to engender an added emphasis on personal empowerment and self-actuation. Within a more distributed, perhaps utopian and unattainable future, where I as the empowered individual have ultimate control over my agentic freedom and the ways in which I’m perceived in an ever-shifting reality, identity and sovereignty must be inextricably intertwined…right?
A Mental Decoupling
While this feels right, I’ve slowly lost conviction of its accuracy (or better put, its adequacy in offering the necessary subtlety). Having recently been subsumed by the work of Future Thinkers, Rebel Wisdom, and a variety of emergent networks doing a lot of thinking about…well, thinking, I’ve come to adopt a more nuanced view of how sovereignty and identity can/should interact and intersect (or more accurately, don't/shouldn’t). Terms I once viewed as interdependent and intimately related have been slowly distancing themselves from one another in my mind; a realization that turns out to be rather important as we approach (often exponentially) the next generation of application-layer technologies that lean into the promise of SSI.
Jordan Greenhall’s dissection of sovereignty is useful here and offers much more than I felt capable of offering in writing:
With this added layer of framing, I‘m now fairly convinced that the persistent pursuit of sovereignty (individually and/or collectively) should proportionally dissolve (in an egoic sense) the notion of identity. My fear is that our current framing of SSI (if not considered carefully) could actually lead to increased polarization and fuel the current fires of identity politics. Sovereignty is a process; a multi-dimensional sphere of potentiality and an ability to make sense of and act honestly in the world. What it’s not is a singular thing you either have or you don’t. Similarly, identity is an amorphous and ever-shifting construct, which is both critical in our quest for meaning and also (imho) potentially destructive (again, individually and collectively). Depending on subtle and perilous shifts in interpretation, the notion of identity can quickly become our greatest existential threat.
Future Freedom
So does the degree to which I’m “self-sovereign” need to define who I am, or could my pursuit towards ultimate sovereignty actually diminish my reliance on a particular identity (or set of identities) entirely? Perhaps that’s true freedom — the capacity to perceive the world objectively and act favorably within it without the burden and perceptual constraints of self-/societally-imposed identities. Perhaps achieving a sort of collective coherence via exponential sovereignty will allow us to break free from the fractured shackles of subjective identity and fully embrace the one identity we all share — that of humanity. One can dream.
If we decouple sovereignty and identity, do we find ourselves in a better position to think about, and ultimately shape, our evolution as a species? Do we as humans even possess the right tools for the job? In looking towards the next generation of networked humans and machines, we may very well find ourselves living in a world of outsourced human fallibility. A future in which sovereignty and identity are not only decoupled but necessarily and fundamentally redefined at every level.
Of Trust & Truth
Trust and truth have been central to the evolution of every civilization; the one we find ourselves in currently is no different. So what do sovereignty and identity look like in a world where these societal axioms become programmable? Do our most powerful institutions go gently into that good night or do they rage, rage against the dying of the light? And if they choose to rage, how will we respond as individuals in pursuit of sovereignty? My personal hope is that we will rage with equal but antithetical vigor — driven by distributed power, collective intelligence, and ethical innovation. We’re already seeing early indications of this impending showdown, and I’m of the opinion that it’s better to be calm and prepared than frantic and reactive.
Over the past decade, our understanding of identity and agency (call it SSI or by any other insufficient acronym) has shifted significantly and will surely continue to as it always has. Those of us in the business of envisioning and constructing the systems and structures of tomorrow — the foundations upon which identities and the capacity to pursue sovereignty are built — should proceed with caution and take time to understand (the best we can) the downstream and future effects of our actions.
Wisdom tells me I am nothing. Love tells me I am everything. And between the two my life flows. ~Nisargadatta Maharaj
