The Future of You

Tracey Follows
  • 5.0 (5)
  • Society & Culture
  • Updated Semiweekly

The Future of You The Future of You is the audio home for Tracey Follows’ work on selfhood in the synthetic age: identity, agency, AI, systems, and who we become when we live with machines. The channel brings together podcast episodes, conversations, audio essays and original recordings exploring how intelligent systems are changing people, organisations and society. FUTURE OF YOU asks: What is technology doing to who we are? The podcast explores digital identity, predictive systems, artificial intelligence, automation, intimacy, trust, synthetic selves and human agency. SYSTEM & SELF asks: What happens between the systems shaping us and the selves living within them? System & Self is Tracey Follows’ worldview and foresight method for understanding the relationship between the systems shaping our lives and the selves living within them. ME:CHINE asks: What happens when machines begin to participate in the making of the self? Me:chine explores the meeting of the machinable and unmachinable self: the parts of us that can be datafied, predicted, copied or generated, and those dimensions of human experience that resist complete computational capture. DIARY OF A FUTURIST scans everyday life for signals of these shifts. On this channel The Future of You podcast explores how technology is reshaping identity and agency. The Future of You audio series presents Tracey’s original 2021 book The Future of You, released chapter by chapter as an audio archive. Me:chine Dialogues brings Tracey into conversation with thinkers exploring identity, AI and the emerging synthetic condition. Together, the work traces an evolving inquiry into selfhood in the synthetic age — from the digital self and the machine-readable self to synthetic selves and Me:chine. Explore further → Futuremade: futuremade.group→ Me:chine: me-chine.com→ The Future of You: futuremade.group/the-future-of-you About Tracey Follows Tracey Follows is a futurist, author and founder of Futuremade. Her work explores selfhood in the synthetic age: identity, agency, AI, systems, and the relationship between systems and selves. Her work includes The Future of You, System & Self and Me:chine. Her central proposition is: “Every future is written between the system and the self.” The Future of You won Best Technology Show at the Independent Podcast Awards 2023.

  1. Jul 30

    Who Gets to Interpret You? | The Machine-Readable Self

    What happens when identity stops being something we declare and becomes something machines infer? In this specially assembled edition of The Future of You, Tracey Follows returns to four conversations that reveal how the self is becoming machine-readable. Artist and AI pioneer Holly Herndon explains why anything captured in media can become training data. Journalist Kashmir Hill traces the rise of searchable facial recognition and the danger of infrastructure built for security being used for exclusion.  Biometrics entrepreneur Andrew Bud explains why the face is becoming the root of trust in the digital economy. Investigative journalist Byron Tau reveals the expanding world of data brokers and the invisible digital exhaust emitted by our devices. Together, these conversations show how identity is becoming an ambient layer assembled from faces, voices, gestures, locations, transactions, relationships and inference. The machine-readable self is not a future scenario. It is already here. Tracey also connects these conversations to her work on the Database Self and the Database Brand, exploring how people and organisations are increasingly interpreted by systems. The question is no longer simply: who are you? It is: who, or what, gets to interpret you? Contributors Holly Herndon Kashmir Hill Andrew Bud Byron Tau Explore Tracey’s wider research and advisory work at futuremade.group. Watch The Future of You: Reframed on YouTube @FutureofYou Visit:  → Me:chine World and essays: me-chine.com → Podcast archive The Future of You → Audiobook series (weekly chapters) Introduction

    Who Gets to Interpret You? | The Machine-Readable Self

  2. Jun 16

    The Database Brand: How AI is changing what a brand is

    This is a short audio essay, based on the first Futuremade View. In The Database Brand, Tracey extends her work on identity, machine readability and the shift from the Designed Self to the Database Self, applying it to brands. For most of modern marketing history, brands were treated as designed identities: names, logos, promises, personalities and desired places in the minds of consumers. But in an AI-mediated world, brands are increasingly assembled from attributes, signals, reviews, metadata, structured data, commentary and inference. The brand is no longer only what it says it is. It is what the system can assemble from what it finds. This episode explores what happens to brand identity when machines begin interpreting the world on behalf of people. Read the Futuremade View: https://www.futuremade.group/future-views.  Explore more of Tracey’s work: → Me:chine World and essays: me-chine.com → Podcast archive: The Future of You → Audio series: weekly chapters from The Future of You About Tracey Follows Tracey Follows is a futurist specialising in identity, agency, and the relationship between systems and selves in an AI-mediated world. Her work includes the frameworks Systems & Self, Identity as Infrastructure, and Me:chine — exploring the machinable and unmachinable dimensions of human identity. Her central premise: “The future is written between the system and the self.”

    The Database Brand: How AI is changing what a brand is

  3. May 20

    Human Resilience in the AI Age

    What if the real threat from AI is not that it suddenly takes over? What if we just slowly hand ourselves over? In this episode of Me:chine Dialogues, Tracey Follows speaks with Lee Rainie, Director of Elon University’s Imagining the Digital Future Center, about the new report Building a Human Resilience Infrastructure for the AI Age, co-authored with Janna Q. Anderson. This is a substantial report: the 52nd Future of Digital Life report from Elon University’s Imagining the Digital Future Center. More than 4,000 experts were invited to contribute; 386 responded, with 251 providing written answers. Across 375 pages, the report gathers views from technologists, academics, policy thinkers, researchers, futurists, commentators and people working inside and around AI systems on one central question: how can humans remain resilient as AI becomes more influential in everyday life and institutional decision-making? For more than two decades, Lee and Janna have been tracking the future of digital life: broadband, mobile connectivity, social media, and now artificial intelligence. Their latest report asks what may be the defining question of the next decade: what kind of resilience will humans need as AI moves deeper into decisions, institutions, relationships, work, education, identity and trust? This is not simply a conversation about AI literacy or better tools. It is about the quiet takeover of systems and decisions. In this episode, Lee explains why traditional ideas of personal resilience, grit, adaptation and perseverance are no longer enough. If AI systems are now mediating rights, risks, knowledge, relationships and opportunities, then resilience cannot sit only with individuals, it has to become institutional, civic, educational, ethical and social. Me:chine Dialogues is a special series from The Future of You exploring identity, agency, and synthetic systems — where the machinable and unmachinable selves meet. This conversation goes to the heart of that terrain. If the machinable self is the part of us that can be rendered legible to systems, then the unmachinable self is what must still be practised: judgement, discernment, metacognition, moral responsibility, imagination, social trust, and the ability to remain the author of one’s own life. Tracey and Lee explore existential literacy, epistemic fragmentation, institutional trust, AI agents, the coming backlash, and the importance of friction in a world designed to remove it. You can find more on this topic through Lee Rainie and Janna Anderson’s report, Building a Human Resilience Infrastructure for the AI Age, from Elon University’s Imagining the Digital Future Center. Explore more of Tracey’s work: → Me:chine World and essays: me-chine.com → Podcast archive: The Future of You → Audio series: weekly chapters from The Future of You About Tracey Follows Tracey Follows is a futurist specialising in identity, agency, and the relationship between systems and selves in an AI-mediated world. Her work includes the frameworks Systems & Self, Identity as Infrastructure, and Me:chine — exploring the machinable and unmachinable dimensions of human identity. Her central premise: “The future is written between the system and the self.” Music “A New Day (intro)” performed by Skott Licensed courtesy of Cosmos Music, Safari Riot Licensed courtesy of Downtown Music UK Limited, Safari Riot Publishing, Sony Music Publishing

    Human Resilience in the AI Age

  4. Apr 30

    Conclusion — The Future of You: Can Your Identity Survive 21st Century Technology? (2021)

    These recordings are taken from the original 2021 edition of The Future of You by Tracey Follows. The chapters are presented here as an audio archive of the text as it was written and published at that time. The book explores how emerging technologies - from artificial intelligence to digital identity systems, and genomics  - are reshaping the nature of personal identity and the idea of the self. This episode contains from the original 2021 edition:  Conclusion — The Future of You (2021)To explore the conversations that followed the book, visit traceyfollows.com or The Future of You podcast at https://www.futuremade.group/podcasts

    Conclusion — The Future of You: Can Your Identity Survive 21st Century Technology? (2021)

  5. Apr 29

    Chapter 7: Destroying You — The Future of You: Can Your Identity Survive 21st Century Technology? (2021)

    These recordings are taken from the original 2021 edition of The Future of You by Tracey Follows. The chapters are presented here as an audio archive of the text as it was written and published at that time. The book explores how emerging technologies - from artificial intelligence to digital identity systems, and genomics  - are reshaping the nature of personal identity and the idea of the self. This episode contains from the original 2021 edition:  Chapter 7: Destroying You — The Future of You (2021) To explore the conversations that followed the book, visit traceyfollows.com or The Future of You podcast at https://www.futuremade.group/podcasts

    Chapter 7: Destroying You — The Future of You: Can Your Identity Survive 21st Century Technology? (2021)

  6. Apr 22

    Chapter 6: Enhancing You — The Future of You: Can Your Identity Survive 21st Century Technology? (2021)

    These recordings are taken from the original 2021 edition of The Future of You by Tracey Follows. The chapters are presented here as an audio archive of the text as it was written and published at that time. The book explores how emerging technologies - from artificial intelligence to digital identity systems, and genomics  - are reshaping the nature of personal identity and the idea of the self. This episode contains from the original 2021 edition:  Chapter 6: Enhancing You — The Future of You (2021) To explore the conversations that followed the book, visit traceyfollows.com or The Future of You podcast at https://www.futuremade.group/podcasts

    Chapter 6: Enhancing You — The Future of You: Can Your Identity Survive 21st Century Technology? (2021)

  7. Apr 16

    Chapter 5: Replacing You — The Future of You: Can Your Identity Survive 21st Century Technology? (2021)

    These recordings are taken from the original 2021 edition of The Future of You by Tracey Follows. The chapters are presented here as an audio archive of the text as it was written and published at that time. The book explores how emerging technologies - from artificial intelligence to digital identity systems, and genomics  - are reshaping the nature of personal identity and the idea of the self. This episode contains from the original 2021 edition:  Chapter 5: Replacing You — The Future of You (2021)To explore the conversations that followed the book, visit traceyfollows.com or The Future of You podcast at https://www.futuremade.group/podcasts

    Chapter 5: Replacing You — The Future of You: Can Your Identity Survive 21st Century Technology? (2021)

  8. Apr 9

    Chapter 4: Connecting You — The Future of You: Can Your Identity Survive 21st Century Technology? (2021)

    These recordings are taken from the original 2021 edition of The Future of You by Tracey Follows. The chapters are presented here as an audio archive of the text as it was written and published at that time. The book explores how emerging technologies - from artificial intelligence to digital identity systems, and genomics  - are reshaping the nature of personal identity and the idea of the self. This episode contains from the original 2021 edition:  Chapter 4: Connecting You — The Future of You (2021)To explore the conversations that followed the book, visit traceyfollows.com or The Future of You podcast at https://www.futuremade.group/podcasts

    Chapter 4: Connecting You — The Future of You: Can Your Identity Survive 21st Century Technology? (2021)
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About

The Future of You The Future of You is the audio home for Tracey Follows’ work on selfhood in the synthetic age: identity, agency, AI, systems, and who we become when we live with machines. The channel brings together podcast episodes, conversations, audio essays and original recordings exploring how intelligent systems are changing people, organisations and society. FUTURE OF YOU asks: What is technology doing to who we are? The podcast explores digital identity, predictive systems, artificial intelligence, automation, intimacy, trust, synthetic selves and human agency. SYSTEM & SELF asks: What happens between the systems shaping us and the selves living within them? System & Self is Tracey Follows’ worldview and foresight method for understanding the relationship between the systems shaping our lives and the selves living within them. ME:CHINE asks: What happens when machines begin to participate in the making of the self? Me:chine explores the meeting of the machinable and unmachinable self: the parts of us that can be datafied, predicted, copied or generated, and those dimensions of human experience that resist complete computational capture. DIARY OF A FUTURIST scans everyday life for signals of these shifts. On this channel The Future of You podcast explores how technology is reshaping identity and agency. The Future of You audio series presents Tracey’s original 2021 book The Future of You, released chapter by chapter as an audio archive. Me:chine Dialogues brings Tracey into conversation with thinkers exploring identity, AI and the emerging synthetic condition. Together, the work traces an evolving inquiry into selfhood in the synthetic age — from the digital self and the machine-readable self to synthetic selves and Me:chine. Explore further → Futuremade: futuremade.group→ Me:chine: me-chine.com→ The Future of You: futuremade.group/the-future-of-you About Tracey Follows Tracey Follows is a futurist, author and founder of Futuremade. Her work explores selfhood in the synthetic age: identity, agency, AI, systems, and the relationship between systems and selves. Her work includes The Future of You, System & Self and Me:chine. Her central proposition is: “Every future is written between the system and the self.” The Future of You won Best Technology Show at the Independent Podcast Awards 2023.

Information

  • Creator
    Tracey Follows
  • Years Active
    2021 - 2026
  • Episodes
    59
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 The Future of You
  • Show Website
    The Future of You