To a certain degree, the internet enables us to become untethered from ourselves and outwardly project an identity and a personality that it’s not really us. In the digital world, we can be anything and anyone we wish to be. In this virtual space, unbound from the laws of reality, we can adopt a new identity, roam free, and interact with other wanderers and nomads.
All the while though, we’re just using a device -be that a computer, a smartphone, or VR goggles- that facilitates this journey. Our physical body, and our mind, remains anchored in place. What’s out there is a mere digital representation of us. But what if technology became advanced enough to enable our very minds to become liberated from our bodies and prowl these meta frontiers? Could we still identify ourselves as us, if only a part of what makes us be was out there, roaming free?
This idea is one of the main themes of Ghost in the Shell, a classic 1995 anime by master animator Mamoru Oshii based on the eponymous manga by Masamune Shirow. Ghost… deals with concepts as complex as the search for individuality, lack of identity, and the realization that, if AI ever reaches a point where it can create its own mind, what would be the point of being human then?
Ghost… takes place in a fictional world in 2029, where people’s artificial bodies (the ‘shells’) have lost most of their biological humanity but retain a brain, with a conscience (‘the ghost’) inside. In this reality, all cybernetic organisms and all life forms are interconnected through a powerful information network -a metaverse, of sorts-. In essence, the human brain and nervous system can access this network directly, thanks to neural implants. But this is open to hacking, something that drives the anime’s narrative, as a hacker only known as Puppet Master implants false memories into some of the ghosts connected to the network, for its own nefarious purposes.
We take a step back here. Ghost… is a work of fiction. Or rather, it was, back when it was released in 1995. Some of the elements proposed are now a reality, or are in the embryonic stage. The BrainGate project for example involves sensors implanted on the brain aiming to assist tetraplegic and ALS patients. And the metaverse makes the news several times a week, with more and more articles popping up everywhere on the net regularly. The metaverse is not quite a reality yet -and whether or not it ever becomes one remains to be seen-, but one of the core ideas of Ghost in the Shell is the theme of this piece, the second in our metaverse series: identity in the metaverse.
Who goes there? Are we still human while in the metaverse?
Identity is a purely human concept, inherent to us all since the moment of birth. We all have a name and a set of traits that identify us to other people, and vice versa. In the real world, we can take steps to safeguard our identity. We can choose and see who we talk to. If in doubt, we can ask for identification documents (which can be faked, of course, but this involves planning, skill, and premeditation. It is not easy to produce convincing physical forgeries.)
In a digital environment (call it metaverse if you like), identity is a far more slippery affair. While roaming online worlds, we happen upon avatars, that is, digital representations of people. But who’s to say that those people are who they say they are? We can’t see who’s behind the avatar, and while we can ask for identification, digital forgeries are easy to craft. This poses a set of fundamental questions: how can we trust anyone in a virtual world? And can we trust ourselves? How can we be individuals if we all live in an artificial society?
The metaverse represents the new frontier where identity, trust, and privacy conflate to create a new, and hitherto unknown paradigm. If the metaverse is to become a place of leisure, business, and other activities, identity must become a primary concern.
And more significantly, if we’re to be us on the metaverse, our real identity must become portable.
In the next installment, we’ll keep exploring this fascinating aspect, delving into the concept of sovereign identity as a method to discern who’s who in the metaverse.
