Institute For The Future

Shift: From Self-Improvement to Reinvention

Another shift that we're certainly seeing is one that I would simply characterize as, self-improvement to reinvention, in which people are refashioning themselves and constructing new identities, however ephemeral or stable they may be, to be part of and to access the resources of the world around them. At IFTF, we have been looking at this space through the Extended Self research and how people are using technology to adapt to the demands of the physical and social environment. Here is one hint at the complex ways this phenomenon is playing out in a place like Bangalore where people are surrounded by new opportunity and there is great pressure---for better or worse---to reinvent oneself.