Natalia Kucirkova - The Future of the Self: Understanding Personalization in Childhood and Beyond

Natalia Kucirkova is Professor of Early Childhood Education and Development at the University of Stavanger, Norway and Professor of Reading and Childrens Development at The Open University, UK. Her research concerns innovative ways of supporting childrens book reading, digital literacy and exploring the role of personalization in the early years. Her research takes place collaboratively across academia, commercial and third sectors. She is author of Digital Personalization in Early Childhood (Bloomsbury) and How and Why to Read and Create Childrens Digital Books (UCL Press) and currently blogs for Psychology Today.

You and I are the first generation to see children growing up with a paraphernalia of digitized personal data. Childrens fragmented selves begin before they are born with embryo images, and in some cases with recorded genome sequences. The diversity of data that exists on todays children is unprecedented, as are the mechanisms for this data to be deployed for strategic educational, marketing, medical, biological and state-sponsored ends. While with the previous generation the self was unbound, todays generation cultivates inner worlds that are fragmented, with diverse identity markers, such as archived photos, real-time text messages or records of movement, amplified by diverse networks. The Generation Alpha, that is, children born between 2010 and 2025 are the first generation to pioneer digital personalization that significantly fragments and augments their selves. This book provides you with some thinking tools to consider your own contribution to the rising levels of fragmented and amplified selves.

In the first decade of the twenty-first century, the personal data economy enabled personalization to grow from a cheap manufacture model to a highly sophisticated practice. The technological know-how of the personal data economy, however, has accelerated faster than general understanding of what constitutes self. I want to challenge the technological representation of self which currently dominates debates about personalization and focus on the mechanisms of personalization that can inform a comprehensive theory. In this theory of personalization, the basic unit is choice we are who we are because of the choices we make. Choices communicate our identities and, therefore, the practice central to the study of personalization is identity. Education scholars, including myself, understand identity as a verb, as an action that is performed in dialogue with others. It follows that personalization is both a noun and a verb. Simply defined, personalization is a nexus of products, services and practices tailored to one human being.

Personalization is undeniable when we think about our everyday modern lives. Personalized education, personalized news, personalized medicine, personalized gifts the adjective personalized changes the meanings of the nouns it qualifies. There are different conceptualizations of personalization in different contexts. To some, personalization is simply tracking an individuals behavior with adaptive technology, to others it is about empowering young children to explore and be creative. Whether we frame personalization in a deficit or opportunity frame, personalization by its very nature speaks to the personal in an individual human being. In education, attention to the individual child can motivate students to learn. In commerce, personalization can persuade customers to buy a product or to be hooked on a pointless game. Contextualizing activities as your journey, your story or your education affects how you perceive their value, and how much attention, intrinsic motivation and material resources you allocate to them. This is why personalization techniques are of great interest to designers, psychologists and educationalists for decades.