As I go through my life without glasses, for the first time in a long, long, long time, I find myself feeling liberated, yet strangely vulnerable.
For the most part of my considerable adult life, I have been shielded by a visible barrier which helped me see the world better yet protected me from its full glare. I tried contact lenses once – for one day and I gave up. There are some things I am persistent about, this was not one of those times.
I first realised I needed glasses when I kept failing my arithmetic in class. My teacher, ever more hopeful than me, suggested I had my eyes checked. Imagine my relief when I was told I was merely short-sighted, not dumb. Turned out however my mathematics only improved marginally with corrected vision. Some things just cannot be helped.
A month ago, I had eye surgery – some kind of lens implant. It’s a new procedure that corrects everything so that you don’t ever need glasses, whether it to be see near or far. I feel like I’m in an episode of “Black Mirror”.
Truthfully, I hardly recognize myself. The first time I looked in the mirror without glasses, I felt naked. I realized how much I had aged and also how much everyone around me had too. The only true democracy really is ageing – yes, you can fight it with weapons of beauty – but there’s no holding back the years.
No one recognizes me anymore too. One morning, at breakfast at Anantara Siam in Bangkok, I ran into Robert Hornman, whom I knew from Worldhotels. He looked right through me and when I told him who I was, he said, “Where are your glasses? That was your trademark.”
Identity and privacy are the two hot button topics these days. Our identity is wrapped up in our data, that which we share freely with companies today in exchange for connectivity and convenience, and of course our identity exists in our own heads as to who we are. We naively trust that those we share our identity and data with will use it carefully and judiciously, but clearly that’s proven not to be the case with the Facebook and Cambridge Analytica debacle which will now become the monster child of this issue.
In the last few weeks, all of us have been bombarded with emails from companies telling us they respect our privacy and will protect our data. There are companies I didn’t even know I was on the mailing list of.
So perhaps the GDPR (General Data Protection Rules), which has come into effect in the EU, will become the moment of truth for data and privacy – that moment when everyone takes it seriously, clean up their act and sort out the good folks from the bad. Truthfully, that’s probably wishful thinking – like any storm, this too shall pass and will resolve itself in the fullness of time.
In Mary Meeker’s Internet Trends Report 2018, there’s a slide that shows that 38% of Chinese are willing to provide sensitive private information in exchange for product improvements compared to just 25% of Americans. Will that give Chinese companies the advantage in using data to develop new technologies and services?
How can any of us cope with the influx of companies asking us to review their privacy terms and conditions? It’s like those instruction manuals that come with every gadget you buy. Even with my new vision, my eyes glaze over. I just received one from Facebook and it felt like, damned if I do, damned if I don’t. Other than erasing my interest, and my religious and political views which I had given as “Peace”, there wasn’t much I could change. One said if I did not agree to share data with partners, I’d still receive ads, just not relevant ones. So what do you choose?
In speaking to colleagues working with data, the feeling is, in general, folks living in Asia are less precious about their privacy than folks in other regions. Perhaps it’s tied to the communal way we live as well as our living spaces – who can think about privacy when you’re living five to a room in tiny spaces?
Identity in our heads is another matter altogether. We all struggle with it at some point in our lives. Entrepreneurs who dedicate their lives to their business lose their rudder after exit or failure. Corporate citizens who spend a large part of their lives with one company struggle with who they are after leaving, either voluntarily or involuntarily.
The number of Uber-now-Grab drivers who speak to me about how they coped after retrenchment or retirement – their stories would fill five volumes of Game of Taxis.
Who we are is in many ways wrapped in what we do, although it shouldn’t be the case. I suspect it’s particularly hard to separate one’s persona from one’s professional identity especially if the business is named after you – for example, Kate Spade.
I have known friends who’ve retired after a long corporate life and many are about to step down. Most tell me the most difficult thing to adapt to is the loss of structure to their days. Some remain lost. Others are reinvigorated to find new interests and form new structures around their lives, to forge new identities.
At some point or other, all of us have had to take a long, hard look at the mirror to figure out who we are and what we really want to be. Some check into health farms, some take long holidays, renting a villa in Italy or Spain – which is really good for our industry, by the way.
At this year’s WIT Singapore conference, we’ve chosen the theme of “Through The Looking Glass” because we feel it’s time for us to take a long, hard look at the mirror, figure out where we are in our business and then to step through to the other side to see if we can take lessons and best practices from the changing world around us to evolve and adapt to a future where everything is blurring.
After all, identity is not set in stone. Changing technology and changing circumstances force us to question that all the time.
Now let me go grab my glasses – oops, I forget. I no longer need them.
