The Digital Identity Game Show: You are the Star!

On the labyrinthine nature of the emergent digital order

I’ve been a little less engaged than usual for the last few days because I finally conceded that the time had arrived to put my old war-horse of a laptop out to pasture and splash out on a swanky new PC. This article which I’m writing now is officially the first content to be produced on my new tech.

The in-built obsolescence of new technology carries with it a certain pathos and inevitability, like Roy Batty from Bladerunner, the technology has five years to shine and then its destiny is met. As the ‘‘user’’ I knew what was to come and tried to extend the life of the laptop with increasing desperation because I knew that my own destiny would entail trying to remember passwords, how one login is connected to another and whether or not the correct phone number was being used to verify this or that account, which itself would be embedded within another app.

The process of frustration began almost immediately upon making the decision to upgrade my technology. I originally decided that I’d go to the shop, to go old school and man-to-man in ‘‘meat-space’’. An old friend then directed me to a site where I could get the same PC £200 cheaper and so back to the internet it was.

This then required that I go through the protocols of buying, then tracking, then hoping, that I was being alerted and trying to decipher their online tracking system which didn’t seem to work, or perhaps it was because the item had not yet been dispatched, or maybe it had but the site was glitching.

And this is before the thing had even arrived.

As I noted in this video last year, there is a logic embedded within digital technology, a pattern which repeats over and over throughout all of its manifestations and models— It is the quest to unlock barriers.

Today, the word ‘‘quest’’ will quite likely illicit within the individual the idea of a fantasy adventure, a role-playing game such as Final Fantasy or Skyrim. The video game itself is of course another manifestation of digital possibilities and worlds, yet here once more, despite the beautifully crafted vistas and sumptuous world-building, the primary concern of the player is to unlock barriers, and achieve goals which will also unlock barriers further ahead.

The player of a video game is rewarded by a new magic sword or access to a new continent or vital piece of information, the real world user is rewarded by gaining access to what is increasingly amounting to their identity. My trepidation at the thought of upgrading my technology is, perhaps, explained by the fact I was reluctant to embark on the quest.

Once I’d navigated my way past Uncle Bill’s obsessive devotion to harvesting all of my data and arrived at the internet proper I began to realize, as I scrawled down passwords on a meat-space jotter with a biro, that Uncle Bill and the boys over at Big-Tech and silicon valley were offering me something of a cheat-code — all I had to do was to link up my phone and they’d make all the anxiety and frustration go away.