Future Self

Definition

The concept of one's future self is an aspect of planning out future opportunities or occurrences that might affect one's future. For instance, one might go to college to increase the chances of one's future self getting a job. Analytics might enable one to predict one's potential future success or failure based on past actions.

Information networks are often used to plan for one's future self. Searching for a place to eat on a restaurant database, for instance, is an element of planning for one's future self and others. One uses the ratings of others to predict the likelihood of a good future experience for the next set of viewers. In this way, rating systems provide an ideal interface between past groups and future groups.

Example

Jarno Koponen has found that "unique information sources, available and accessible in digital networked environments, can be used as a data set for the extrapolation of an individual's potential futures. Based on an interactive analysis process, a carefully crafted system using artificial intelligence, data mining processes and behavior adaptive features can generate contextualized interactive personal future simulations in the form of interconnected micro-future scenarios".