The sym­bi­ot­ic rela­tion­ship between a per­son, his dig­i­tal twin and avatar.

With the out­break of the glob­al pan­dem­ic, peo­ple are turn­ing more and more to dig­i­tal solu­tions. The num­ber of hours which we spend on our dig­i­tal devices has increased sig­nif­i­cant­ly. We are get­ting used to a cer­tain lev­el of con­ve­nience (e.g., work­ing at home). Mean­while com­pa­nies are clos­ing offices and busi­ness­es because they expect a high­er turnover from online busi­ness. How will the world look after the pandemic?

In her lat­est Duet Inter­view with Peter Wip­per­mann, a researcher in emerg­ing trends, Dr Cal­daro­la, author of Big Data and Law, dis­cuss­es the changes in our social lives.

With every click in the social media – whether it is to book a vac­ci­na­tion or to order a meal – peo­ple are leav­ing their dig­i­tal foot­prints. With the help of pro­fil­ing soft­ware, a dig­i­tal twin of an actu­al per­son is being cre­at­ed. Since our social and pro­fes­sion­al lives are hard­ly pos­si­ble nowa­days with­out using dig­i­tal solu­tions, is our dig­i­tal twin/clone unavoid­able? Is anonymi­ty even pos­si­ble in today’s world?

Peter Wip­per­mann: The sim­ple fact of using the inter­net means we auto­mat­i­cal­ly pro­duce indi­vid­ual data pro­files on the var­i­ous plat­forms and data banks. With­out per­son­al data it would not be pos­si­ble to tai­lor indi­vid­ual ser­vices, prod­ucts, access rights, autho­riza­tion and col­lab­o­ra­tion in the data sphere.

The dig­i­tal twin of a per­son would only be cre­at­ed when infor­ma­tion from var­i­ous data sources were put togeth­er. A true dig­i­tal twin would only real­ly be pos­si­ble in an alter­nate uni­verse, a sort of col­lec­tive vir­tu­al space of all dig­i­tal worlds which until now only exists in the sci­ence fic­tion nov­el Snow Crash.

Dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, dig­i­tal games have become par­tic­u­lar­ly pop­u­lar. Peo­ple play with their avatars in this venue, mean­ing a dig­i­tal cre­ation which they them­selves have made and enhanced by, for exam­ple, dress­ing it, giv­ing it tasks, in short, mak­ing a pro­file for it. Com­pa­nies see poten­tial for a new mar­ket in this devel­op­ment. They have begun not only sell­ing actu­al fash­ion to peo­ple, they also pro­vide dig­i­tal cloth­ing for the avatars on the inter­net- at a price of course. Are we see­ing the cre­ation of new mar­kets? Or can we expect the cur­rent­ly exist­ing mar­kets to sim­ply become part of the dig­i­tal world?

Vir­tu­al fash­ion has indeed become pop­u­lar dur­ing the pan­dem­ic. Lux­u­ry fash­ion indus­tries have become pio­neers in this new field. As a result of this devel­op­ment, the pri­or­i­ties of sales and mar­ket­ing have shift­ed from the real world to the vir­tu­al one of games.

Louis Vuit­ton was among the first to offer vir­tu­al fash­ion and since 2019 has been work­ing togeth­er with Riot Games, the devel­op­er of the com­put­er game, “League of Leg­ends “. In this way, the pres­tige skin for Qiyana which was designed by Nico­las Ghesquière, Artis­tic Direc­tor of the LV Ladies Col­lec­tion, is vir­tu­al­ly avail­able in the “League of Leg­ends “Store and can also be pur­chased as an actu­al Louis Vuit­ton fash­ion item.

What is the rela­tion between a real per­son, his dig­i­tal twin and his avatar? Could we say that we all have three iden­ti­ties? What chal­lenges do you think hav­ing these var­i­ous per­sonas means for us? Are head­ing for some sort of per­son­al­i­ty dis­or­der? Is it appro­pri­ate to speak of “dig­i­tal schizophrenia”?

Media have devel­oped from infor­ma­tion and com­mu­ni­ca­tion to par­tic­i­pa­tion and final­ly to immer­sion. Aug­ment­ed real­i­ty, vir­tu­al real­i­ty and holo­grams are going to be seen as a nat­ur­al part of our dai­ly lives in the years to come and will become increas­ing­ly vis­i­ble. Peo­ple and con­sumers are going to use these vir­tu­al real­i­ties, just as we have become accus­tomed to the inter­net in the last thir­ty years with­out devel­op­ing dig­i­tal schizophrenia.

Accep­tance of new dig­i­tal worlds has been accel­er­at­ed dur­ing the COVID pan­dem­ic and can be par­tic­u­lar­ly well observed in the fit­ness indus­try. Pelo­ton offers a car­dio bicy­cle with live work­out cours­es via video stream­ing and has become so suc­cess­ful that it is sim­ply not able to keep up with the demand. “Mir­ror” from Lul­ule­mon already offers the next lev­el in evo­lu­tion: ” THE smart home gym”. A full-sized mir­ror is also a com­put­er inter­face and becomes a per­son­al train­er owing to arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence and machine learn­ing. Zwift goes one step fur­ther by com­bin­ing fit­ness with gam­ing and com­mu­ni­ty. In this way, you can ride your sta­tion­ary bicy­cle and com­pete with friends all over the vir­tu­al world.

Does a per­son iden­ti­fy himself/herself with his/her dig­i­tal twin and his avatar?

Most peo­ple find dig­i­tal pro­files of their own iden­ti­ty rather fright­en­ing. Euro­peans users of inter­ac­tive prod­ucts expect to be pro­tect­ed by laws, such as the GDPR, which guar­an­tee their basic right to pri­va­cy. But if we look at the US or Chi­na there are no com­pa­ra­ble laws there. And just a reminder: the glob­al providers of dig­i­tal ser­vices are not based in Europe.

It’s a dif­fer­ent mat­ter alto­geth­er if we look at avatars. In this case, peo­ple devel­op emo­tion­al attach­ments to their vir­tu­al selves.

Even in the real world you can find more and more pros­thet­ics for peo­ple con­tain­ing a dig­i­tal com­po­nent. It will soon be pos­si­ble to attach an arti­fi­cial eye which is real­ly a video cam­era to the optic nerve, thus enabling the visu­al­ly impaired to be able to see. This type of tech­nol­o­gy is a mix­ture of the actu­al world and a world which is always repro­duc­ing itself because the arti­fi­cial eye is capa­ble of repeat­ing what hap­pened innu­mer­able times because any event can sim­ply be stored and re-played at will. What sort of chal­lenges will we be fac­ing, espe­cial­ly if one imag­ines that these record­ings can be repro­duced and changed?

The right to your own image is going to have to be recon­sid­ered. Per­son­al per­cep­tions and repro­duc­ing your own impres­sions by means of med­ical pros­thet­ics will need fed­er­al protection.

Peo­ple are active both in the real and in the dig­i­tal world. Which sphere is influ­enc­ing the other?

The vir­tu­al world is chang­ing the ana­log world. Just as our indi­vid­ual mobil­i­ty has altered our dai­ly lives and even cities because we dri­ve cars now, so too will our con­scious­ness, our social rela­tion­ships, our work­ing envi­ron­ment and our soci­ety as a whole be changed by a sort of immer­sion, mean­ing being present in vir­tu­al real­i­ties. After the advent of smart phones, we will expe­ri­ence aug­ment­ed real­i­ty glass­es as the next hard­ware platform.

Today’s gen­er­a­tions use dig­i­tal tools in dif­fer­ent ways and with vary­ing degrees of inten­si­ty. As we have seen, the old­er mem­bers of our pop­u­la­tions have been expe­ri­enc­ing dif­fi­cul­ties reg­is­ter­ing online for their COVID vac­ci­na­tion, with some resort­ing to their grand­chil­dren for help. We see a sim­i­lar trend at schools with some old­er teach­ers being reluc­tant to work with com­put­ers and hav­ing dif­fi­cul­ties stay­ing on top of new dig­i­tal ped­a­gog­i­cal meth­ods. How is the dig­i­tal rev­o­lu­tion being expe­ri­enced by the dif­fer­ent age groups? How are the var­i­ous gen­er­a­tions man­ag­ing despite their deficits or advan­tages in this area? What con­flicts can we expect to see?

Those who have grown up with new tech­no­log­i­cal advances will con­sid­er them as the most nat­ur­al thing in the world. Accept­ing vir­tu­al worlds begins in a child’s bed­room. Instead of play­ing with build­ing blocks in the sand box, kids are build­ing new worlds by play­ing Minecraft. Lego is com­bin­ing tra­di­tion­al build­ing com­po­nents with aug­ment­ed real­i­ty and enables indi­vid­ual com­put­er games on mobile phones. By the time they are ten years of age, 75% of chil­dren already have a mobile phone, two years lat­er the fig­ure stands at about 95%. For this gen­er­a­tion hav­ing per­ma­nent access to a mobile inter­net and new vir­tu­al rooms is self-evi­dent. For this rea­son, reverse men­tor­ing makes sense: the young are coach­ing the old.

Not every­one wants a dig­i­tal twin or their own avatar. Anonymi­ty is still a right. Will anonymi­ty become a lux­u­ry item?

My opin­ion is:

 

“Who­ev­er is not locked in, will be locked out.”

Peter Wip­per­mann

Anonymi­ty in the dig­i­tal sphere will devel­op into a pre­mi­um ser­vice that needs to be paid for. Only the future can reveal what will hap­pen as far as iden­ti­ty man­age­ment, and the con­scious man­ag­ing of iden­ti­ty, anonymi­ty and pseu­do-anonymi­ty are concerned.

Mr Wip­per­mann, thank you for shar­ing your insights on the val­ue of data.

Thank you, Dr Cal­daro­la, and I look for­ward to read­ing your upcom­ing inter­views with rec­og­nized experts, delv­ing even deep­er into this fas­ci­nat­ing topic.