An essay on digital identity, synthetic images and the longing for reality
We live in a time in which machines not only talk to us, but can apparently also ‘see’ us. All it takes is the press of a button, an algorithm, a few data points, and suddenly an image of us appears that seems astonishingly real. So real that we ask ourselves: is this another fantasy about me, or is it really me?
These new tools are not neutral. They create versions of us, portraits of our possible selves, fed from a huge reservoir of collective imagination. And yet an unease remains. A doubt.
‘Why would I want to be someone I don’t know?’
This question is not a technical dilemma, but a deeply human one. We are on the threshold of a new era. Some call it the postmodern age of digitality, others the machine age. It is a turning point: the moment when we have access to tools more powerful than ever before in human history. And it is precisely at this moment that a quiet colonisation begins.
Not by states. Not with weapons. But through data. Through images. Through narratives that do not come from ourselves, but are generated by machine systems. Systems that perfect our needs for connection, expression and visibility and at the same time replace them synthetically.
Content is no longer just expression. It is circulation. Recycling. An eternal reuse of the same thing in a new form. What was once a diary is now a feed. What was a real conversation becomes a comment under an avatar.
We live in the holodeck – or at least in a preliminary stage of it. And sometimes, when the simulation is too good, we forget that it is a simulation. Then we need reality to kiss us awake. A real conversation. A look. A touch.
It’s not about condemning technology. It is a tool, a mirror, sometimes even a muse. But we have to stay awake. Remember that no digital portrait can ever capture our depth. And that our true self is not generated from data, but from experience.
Perhaps future generations will look back on this time and say: ‘That’s when it began. The great divide between who we were and who we thought we were.’
Or they will say: ‘There were people who saw what was coming – and who didn’t run blindly into it.’
Because that is precisely our task: to be aware. Not to lose ourselves in the hall of mirrors of possibilities, but to return again and again. To ourselves. To what really is.