GRAPH IDs As people struggle to manage the conflicting priorities of privacy and security, a new interface will begin to emerge as a way to represent—and trade on—our identities in digital space. At the core of this interface is the network graph. The network graph will be built on a substrate of reliable reputation and certification platforms, perhaps using block chain ledgers of immutable, traceable histories. By 2025, people will be able to view and manage their identities through the lens of four key network graphs: the social graph, interest graph, behavior graph, and health graph.

WHAT‘S DRIVING THIS FORECAST Rapidly escalating scale of cyber attacks, government surveillance, and targeted advertising New peer-to-peer architectures for restructuring internet transactions of all kinds Advances in foundational technologies, including: intelligent agents; sensing and recognition technologies; data mining, reasoning, and machine learning; and rendering and modeling Robust APIs to secure personal private graph database of richly linked and indexed life data Experimental platforms for managing, protecting, and trading portions of one’s own graph ID, with all the connections and metadata attached to it

CROWD-HOSTED DATA New web browsers protect individual data by hosting entire web sites not on a corporate server in the cloud, but on personal computers in the crowd SIGNAL: The Maelstrom project by BitTorrent is an experimental project to publish and browse websites that don’t reside on a server but rather are distributed across individual users’ browsers Image source: technologyreview.com/news/534501/bittorrent-tests-websites-hosted-in-the-crowd-not-the-cloud/ SO WHAT: Peer-to-peer architectures begin to supplant the server architectures of the present-day internet to make it possible for users to own their own data

PEER-TO-PEER SEARCH Image source: yacy.net New search engines decentralize search portals, allowing everyone to create their own search portal or access the public internet SIGNAL: YaCy is a free search engine that can scale to accommodate every person on the planet and index billions of web pages SO WHAT: While individuals can track their own search history to create personal interest graphs, others cannot Image source: yacy.net

WHO’S TRACKING WHOM? Image source: mozilla.org/en-US/lightbeam/ User tools for tracking sites that are tracking them empower users to block trackers or allow them at will SIGNAL: Lightbeam is an add-on to the Firefox web browser that automatically creates network graphs of who is tracking you as you visit sites on the web SO WHAT: As track-the-tracker tools evolve—including blocking and data-selling options—they create a new user-controlled market for personal data Image source: mozilla.org/en-US/lightbeam/

MY GRAPH, MYSELF A host of new tools help users represent aspects of their identities as network graphs SIGNAL: Jerry’s Brain is a mobile iPhone app that represents Jerry Michalski’s knowledge as a network graph with both public and private nodes SO WHAT: Network graphs take their place beside photographs and avatars as unique representations of individual identities Image source: thebrain.com/community/big-thinker-quotes/jerry

THE NEXT FIVE YEARS Block chain architectures rapidly create a platform for both concealing and revealing personal identity graphs Global linked-data initiatives lay the foundation for viewing data from multiple sources to build personal graphs Debates rage over who owns your personal data on private platforms—and the graphs they produce New platforms support users who want to capitalize on their personal data graphs Terms of service agreements are reformed to express in simple terms what rights users have to their own data In a world of crypto currencies, we begin to manage our personal data flows much the same way we manage our currencies

TEN-YEAR SCENARIO A decade from now, graph representations of users are as familiar, tradeable, and malleable as avatars, photographs, and resumes. Tools not only help us compile and visualize our networked identities, they also help us create many different views for many different purposes. They help us protect and hide those aspects of ourselves that we want to keep private, but they also help us offer information about ourselves for sale or trade. In managing our participation in this marketplace, we establish privacy not so much as a right but as currency that we can choose to spend or hoard.