Rethinking Human Identity in the Age of Autonomic Computing: the Philosophical Idea of Trace

We are entering into the age of computers clouding and autonomic computing, as defined by the increasing convergence of online and offline life, whose frontier is the interface between human and machine. This interface has become part of our daily life, to the extent to which we accept it as integral to our reality, by treating the virtual as reality itself. The virtual reality is the product of a multiagent system made of human and artificial agents and autonomic computing. When acting in the multiagent system, we are no longer able to ascertain who we are really interacting with, who is either exporting or importing our personal data, who accounts for what, who we are as a result of all more or less visible interactions we undergo: this has many consequences in relation to our agency, accountability and privacy. The way agents are “present” both in the virtual and in the real space is by leaving traces of their passage, operations, interactions and so forth. Human identity and legal subjectivity can no longer be envisaged by means of an already assured evidence but are to be reconstructed by reference to the traces left by interacting agents, be human or artificial. What can play thus the role of a centre of imputation in the horizon of autonomic computing? The trace may be assumed, in its legal-historical consistency, as a point of reference, to account for the chain of causation and the relation between autonomy and responsibility. This requires to investigate the philosophical status of the trace, whose traceability in the digital sphere enables us to refer to what has been trailed and transform it into a common shared reference. This particular form of reference substitutes the classical notion of subjectivity and allow us to deal with the technological evolution out of the alternative between utopian and dystopian perspectives upon technology.