Digital ID Coach

You (the default mode)

July 8th, 2009

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Science News is running an article called You Are Who You Are By Default in which author Tina Hesman Saey explores the brain’s default network. This network, one researcher believes, is “more active when the brain is at rest.” There are two areas in the brain that seem to work as your default network.

From the article:

Functions ascribed to those two areas may give clues to what the default network is good for. The medial prefrontal cortex is involved in imagining, thinking about yourself and “theory of mind,” which encompasses the ability to figure out what others think, feel or believe and to recognize that other people have different thoughts, feelings and beliefs from you. The precuneus and PCC are involved in pulling personal memories from the brain’s archives, visualizing yourself doing various activities and describing yourself.

Together, these hubs give you a sense of who you are. Their prominence in the network has led some researchers to propose that the function of the default mode is to allow you to internally explore the world and your place in it, so you can plot future actions, including contingency plans for various scenarios you might encounter.

Of interest, your default network can also be a source of distraction:

The default mode network sometimes stirs during monotonous tasks, drawing away a person’s attention. Such reactivation of the network predicted errors up to 30 seconds before a person made a mistake…. And a study … shows that not only is the default network involved in mind-wandering, it also distracts executive areas of the brain, so that people aren’t even aware that their minds have wandered off task.

The article continues to explore the network as a center of certain brain-based illnesses, such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PSTD) or Alzheimer’s. These are all parts of our inner selves that make us unique and who we are.

Coaching moment: Our minds are busy balancing our priorities and needs during every moment of our lives. What does this have to do with digital identity? Everything: it’s our priorities and needs that are being represented by ones and zerosthat are in the control of various parties.

When something is really important to me, I like to make sure that it’s taken care of according to my standards. But when my details are in someone else’s hands, and they have a very different set of priorities, I don’t have any assurances that my interests will be represented, much less taken care of. I believe others feel the same way about certain details in their lives.

So the question arises: what’s most important to you? What details of your life would you feel most strongly about having exclusive control over? What things do you care less about? Are there any systems or tools that might help you with the important bits? Are you fighting the interests of a powerful company or industry? What’s it going to take?

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