Abstract
This paper argues in favor of a hybrid conception of identity. A common conception of identity in datafied society is a split between a digital self and a real self, which has resulted in concepts such as the data double, algorithmic identity, and data shadows. These data-identity metaphors have played a significant role in the conception of informational privacy as control over information—the control of or restricted access to your digital identity. Through analyses of various data-identity metaphors as well as philosophical accounts of identity, we argue in favor of a hybrid conception of identity that emphasizes the relations between the ‘real’ and the ‘digital’. A hybrid conception of identity—where the digital is an aspect on par with social relations, self-understanding, and values—ultimately calls for an understanding of privacy as the right to influence one’s own identity.
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In the following we will present a selection of identity theories in order to demonstrate how identity is a complex process involving both internal and external factors. The review of theories is not exhaustive and other theories could have been chosen – e.g. Hacking’s (1996) looping effects of human kinds or Wallace’s (2019) network self – however, we have chosen a set of theories that in some way or other explicitly deal with the digital domain or the structuring force of language.
Solove is a pragmatist arguing in favor of a pluralist understanding of privacy based on the protection against different yet related problems. Thus, Solove (2008) is not a control theorist and does not defend any single theory of privacy. However, he has a great overview including detailed descriptions of the different conceptions of privacy available.
Hildebrandt (2019) also argues in favor of the connection between privacy and identity in advancing the account that privacy needs to be understood “as the protection of the incomputable self” (p. 96).
The original text is written partly backwards. Each word is written in the right direction but the order is reversed and reads from the bottom up. The quote in the original reads as follows: “time in unfixed be to is human be To” (Wittkower, 2011, p. 297).
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Acknowledgements
We would like to thank our colleagues in the Don’t Take it Personal project Bjarki Valtysson, Johan Lau Munkholm, Rikke Frank Jørgensen, and Tanja Wiehn for helpful comments and constructive discussions along the way. We would also like to thank two anonymous reviewers for very constructive and helpful comments on an earlier version of this article.
Funding
This research was conducted within the project “’Don’t Take it Personal’: Privacy and Information in an Algorithmic Age”, which is generously funded by the Independent Research Fund Denmark, grant number: 8018-00041B.
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Søe, S.O., Mai, JE. Data identity: privacy and the construction of self. Synthese 200, 492 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-022-03968-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-022-03968-5