WHAT I LEARNED FROM BLADE RUNNER 2049

WHAT I LEARNED FROM BLADE RUNNER 2049

Identity is the new money

OK, admittedly the title of this post dangles like a morsel of click-bait. I did see the movie (while my wife shopped), but did not get a whole lot out of it other than the observation that all of the main characters seem to be experiencing some sort of existential identity confusion: replicant or human; only your hairdresser knows for sure.

However, it did remind again of the increasing importance of identity authentication in our virtual, borderless, and increasingly futuristic (think cognitive tech explosion) world.

Just in time for the banks too, because in this emerging era of math-based, digital, borderless, cryptocurrency we certainly won't need them to provide custodial services for our money. I can handle that now, thank you very much, with my cryptographicly protected wallet and the globally replicated, decentralized, immutable, unhackable blockchain. (And if you think that only money with government backing has value, ponder the inevitable fate of the national airlines; where nation-state aggregation, control, and branding does not add value to a product or service, it will eventually give way to a more competitive open market model.)

Back to identity management and banks. Actually, I would pay a bank to provide custodial services for my identity. And I am not talking about those ridiculous credit monitoring services everyone promotes after the latest personally identifiable information (PII) honeypot hack, but rather true attestation, validated on the blockchain, of who I am, as a real life physical entity born in a time and place, including the credentials and accomplishments to which society (currently) ascribes value (e.g. university degree).

Of course they would need to adhere to the principles of self-sovereign identity management (more on this in later posts), as the customer should always be in control, but I can see banks (and audit firms also, by the way) providing a meaningful and valuable service in this area. Heavens knows we need someone to get a handle on this; I cant believe that Gen Z is going to be as laissez faire as we have been about their identities being abused and misused for profit.