Identity in an algorithmic world.

How do Jacks of All Trades compete in a world of Masters of One?

Identity is a fickle friend.

A week ago I was invited along to a special Third Thursday to celebrate techSPARK's 10th birthday (thanks for thinking of me Ben) and while I had great fun (perhaps too much fun! 🥂), these events always remind me how tricky our sense of identity and self can be.

This is especially true in the ultra-processed, hyper-focused, algorithmic world we live in... and it's especially acute for anyone with an inkling of imposter syndrome too.

Let me explain.

Third Thursday is a tech event. It's something Becky I created when I ran Deep Blue Sky, a digital agency, during the last Bath Digital Festival we looked after. It was created a way to keep the community together and build momentum over the 11 months between each festival.

techSPARK - the current custodians of the festival - are similarly tech focused and were born from David Maher Roberts' BathSpark ... in many ways precursor to David Kelly & co's idea to start the festival.

This event was simultaneously a Third Thursday, an end to this year’s festival and techSPARK’s 10th birthday. Quite the bash.

An so you can see... it's all very neat and together... but it's also very tech.

So what's the problem?

Well, standing amongst so many tech faces ... and catching up with folk I've not perhaps seen for some time ... I get a little lost and tongue-tied when anyone ask me about what I'm up to because the truth is - I have lost my identity.

Let me be clear - I don't mind. I'm very lucky to be where I am. But I don't understand how to communicate it at all because I don't think it fits people's expectations of what a professional trajectory looks like.

So who am I?

The most tech thing I do, I guess, is relentlessly trying to get OneSub + Charlie off the ground... so there is that... Perhaps that still qualifies me as a “techie”…?

... but I've spent most of the past two years being a builder. I've converted our old Deep Blue Sky offices into four apartments and rather than being a stand-back property developer I've got my hands dirty and done all the work: demolition to decoration. I've absolutely loved it. In fact there's a whole series of posts I could write about what I've learned... about skills and trades, about managing people, about the law and about myself. Does that make me a “builder”…?

... I've also taken on a small farm. I've learned to drive a digger, cut hedges, rear and break horses, cultivate the land, manage drainage, neighbours, footpath, tractors and trees. Does that make me a “farmer”…?

... I also homeschool three kids (with, let's be clear, the minority responsibility). Does that make me a “teacher”…?

The point is, it feels like today's world increasingly expects us to be something in order to be someone. To be an expert. To focus on one topic.

Even our social media, lifeblood of so much of our culture, rewards people for sticking to narrow topics that their language-models can pick up on and use for algorithmic recommendations.

... and what we're fed online feeds into our reality offline.

Our expectation is that people fit the narrow mould we ascribe to them .. from our experience of them or simply because of how they look and speak.

We are becoming so very obsessed with our personal brand … and anyone in branding or marketing will tell you — you have to be laser-focused on one thing to succeed.

What’s missing?

What I think is missing from the world is the easy celebration of plurality, variety and diversity in our personal and professional lives.

It may well be a “me problem” … that I’m uncomfortable articulating that I’m part tech, part farmer, part builder, part teacher … but I can’t be the only one who struggles?

For one thing, I would imagine (though I have no direct experience, obviously) that a great many women — especially returning to work mums — have to deal with the Victorian expectation of career that, subconsciously, so many of us have… All day. Every day. I suspect that half the population already copes with the disparity between expectation (the thing we sell ourselves as) and reality (the person under a dozen hats).

As a culture though, as we move into the AI age, what worries me most is that — rather than liberating us from these old expectations — we are going to become more blinkered, more pigeon-holed, more constrained into our careers and our identities as we become more kettled, more normalised by algorithmic influences. It’s already happening just in the way we communicate or navigate.

Are you left or right? Just Stop Oil or climate denier? Techie or Farmer? Builder or Pianist? Pro-Israeli or Pro-Palestinian?

I don’t believe these dichotomies are real, much less helpful. Nevertheless they’re becoming culturally stronger as each day goes by and I think we all need to work hard to fight them … to do many things and to talk about many things, from many angles.

The truth is, for all the folk at Third Thursday who expressed confusion or surprise that I might not really know what I do any more… builder, techie or farmer… they will all have amazing talents, skills, hobbies and opportunities that I don’t know about either. Deep down so many of us are generalists - we just don’t show it.

And on all the subjects we might discuss about politics, climate, war, sports or culture there is always far more nuance, detail, complexity and fascination to the subject than we’re fed on the news.

Our identity is, in the end a reflection of our culture … or is it the other way around?

Either way, we should not feel that our identity has to be tied to one thing in order to be valid.

Being a jack of all trades should be just as valid as being a master of one.

Being a generalist should be something we can celebrate.

At least — I hope it can be … because I am never going back to just being one thing.