The rise of the metaverse and the evolution of digital platforms have opened new dimensions for interaction and personal expression. This transition, however, is not only about technology. It is also about how we perceive and define our digital identity.
In this setting, metrics such as likes, followers, and views have become the main yardsticks by which we measure our worth, personal and professional alike. But are we really aware of what these metrics do to our authenticity?
In my TEDxMacerata talk, “Reflections on identity in the age of the metaverse,” I look at how the digital world, through an “infinite mirror,” duplicates and fragments our image, and challenges us to keep a balance between visibility and self-awareness. The talk is in Italian; the full transcript, in English, is below.
Transcript of the TEDx talk
Good evening, everyone. It’s a pleasure to be here.
I am a business strategist, a digital strategist.
What does that mean?
For a living, I design strategies and development plans for companies, public institutions, and people too.
Over the past fifteen years I have asked myself one question more and more often: how digital transformation can affect, and does affect, our identity, our perception of ourselves.
That is what we are talking about today.
We live a reality, a physical identity. We inhabit it every day. You can walk on it, so to speak.
Then we also have to deal with this digital identity, which you cannot walk on, but which we live every day just the same.
So let’s begin this short exploration.
Human beings have always tried to improve themselves. They have always pursued improvement, always tried to move from one stage of knowledge to the next.
Let’s see why.
Throughout history, they chose to do this. And how did they manage it?
As Aristotle said, articulate thought, philosophy, begins with an act of wonder.
Thauma, Aristotle called it.
We translate it as wonder, partly to make a good impression on stage.
But in ancient Greek, thauma is actually a neutral term: it means surprise in the face of something unknown.
So yes, it is wonder, but it could also be a negative wonder.
A horror.
It is a shift in our perception that pushes us to change, to question ourselves, to improve.
This is the principle of our movement toward higher knowledge.
But how did humanity manage to move forward?
Certainly by comparing itself with others and with the society around it, with everything that is part of our lives.
But also by confronting itself.
Human beings created a mirror. Picture it.
They created a mirror in which they could reflect themselves.
A finite mirror to talk to.
They created a mirror, they see their reflected image, and that is where the speculation begins, this dialogue with themselves.
So, a mirror that reflects us, and provokes reflection.
But at some point, a few decades ago, human beings created something else.
A mirror that does not reflect our image, but duplicates it.
A mirror that duplicates our image.
Think of the avatar, the digital profile.
Think of digital identity.
Not a finite mirror that reflects us, but an infinite mirror that duplicates us.
With the finite mirror, with a clearly bounded perception of ourselves, we could hold a dialogue, have a relationship. The thesis, the mirror, the other, ourselves, gave us back the antithesis, and together we could reach a synthesis, which was the new degree of knowledge. But with this infinite mirror, which has no edges, which cannot be measured, how do we hold a dialogue?
It is hard to hold a dialogue, because if we put out our thesis, no antithesis will come back for us to build a synthesis with. Or, more likely, far too many will come back, and we still won’t manage to reach our synthesis.
And so it will be very hard to move up to a higher stage of knowledge.
This infinite mirror cannot give us back the finiteness of our experience.
We created this dimension because, all things considered, what we are creating is the natural process of knowledge.
It is a beautiful process, but one in which, right now, we feel pain and we suffer a little, too.
At some point we face this new digital dimension that we have created and are still creating, and we are afraid.
We are afraid of this new reality.
Fear is a positive thing, because it creates wonder, it creates astonishment.
But it also drives human beings to throw into this dimension some coordinates to find their bearings.
What are the coordinates we use to find our way in this digital world?
Fortunately, we draw on logos, on our experience, on numbers.
And so digital today, as all of us here tonight can see, is full of metrics and statistics.
How do we find out whether my idea works within my circle of friends?
I publish a post, then we go and see how many likes it gets.
Metrics.
How do we see whether our website is well made?
Whether our e-commerce is well made?
Whether the message we send online is well made?
Whether the video we post on YouTube draws people in?
We go and look at the metrics.
As long as they remain coordinates for finding our way, that is fine.
But maybe metrics, today, have become something more.
These numbers, these statistics, have become something different.
Let me tell you a story.
Many years ago, when I was young and worked as an art director at a communications agency in Milan, we made television commercials, international shoots, advertising campaigns, and we needed models, actors, actresses.
So we called the modeling agency, which promptly sent us the comp cards, those A5 sheets with the model’s photo and standard measurements.
Then we would shoot, there were other photographs.
We would call and hold the casting.
Do you know what happens today if you call a modeling agency?
The same thing.
But there is one more note in every email, if not on the comp card itself.
The modeling agency makes a point of telling us how many followers this person has, how many fans on social media, how well they “perform” on social.
Even if that photo showed a puppet, we would be invited to take this model, this puppet, and bring her into our project.
Do you see that something isn’t working?
What happened?
What happened is that the quantity of the metrics became the perception and the measure of our quality in certain fields, the measure of our worth.
And what does that lead us to do?
It leads us to communicate ourselves more and more, to assert ourselves in this new digital identity.
So we communicate.
We start producing content, content, content.
Fortunately it is no longer like this, but at the beginning, until a few years ago, if you wanted to be present on social media it was “at least one video a day, a week,” “at least three or four photos on Instagram a day,” “twelve tweets a day.”
There are Twitter profiles with more than 50,000 tweets.
Crazy things.
You can see that content and metrics are traps.
They clearly are traps, and not only that.
This changes our perception and our personal identity. It also changes the way we communicate and structure our thinking.
Content not only has to be produced in large quantities, it also has to go viral.
We have to write so that it is fast, viral, shareable, and so we take the content apart.
We reduce big ideas to a few bullet points:
“Five ways to be more beautiful”
“The 25 most beautiful photographs of the Italian peninsula”
Click!
We take things apart and put them back together in a superficial way.
This is a real content trap.
It is a distorted way of perceiving the alignment between our walkable identity, physical, analog, true, and our equally true, but not walkable, digital identity.
We have to align them. We have to learn to align them.
As I was climbing the stairs, I was thinking of some words by Fabrizio De André.
We must avoid becoming those monsters, all reason on one side and all instinct on the other, that he called “wild boars with a degree in pure mathematics.”
That is what is happening.
On one side the metrics, on the other the instinct of the like placed on a photo.
So, we have to find a balance.
How do we do that?
How do we get out of this?
I have no truth in my pocket to hand out.
What I say tonight will probably be false, or wrong, in a few months or a few years, because that is how it should be.
Identity, especially digital identity, will change.
But a few small pointers, a small vision, in the true spirit of TED, I do want to give you.
We have to take back a couple of ideas.
The first is slowness.
Slowness.
We have to stretch time.
We have to make sure our messages are not short-term: the like, the instant photo.
We have to start reasoning with the non-instinctive part of the other person.
We must not provoke a quick response from the other person.
We have to learn instead to think of the whole thing as a dialogue.
We have to learn to think of it as a circular message, as something that “attaches” before and “attaches” after to a great flow of consciousness and knowledge.
We have to learn to provoke not the other person’s instinct, but the other person’s reason.
We have to stretch time: slowness.
We have to have the time not to wait for a like, but to wait for a response to our content.
These are two profoundly different ideas.
One last word and then I’ll let you go.
It is lightness.
One of the few authors I have kept returning to in recent years, along with Flaiano, is Italo Calvino, who wrote memorable, wonderful pages of literature and essays.
In particular his last book, Six Memos for the Next Millennium, which was his final work. So much so that it is unfinished, because he died before completing it.
It contains a magnificent chapter: “Lightness.”
Read it, if you haven’t.
It introduces us to a beautiful idea.
To face all this, or to put it in the right perspective, that is, to align our personal, physical identity with our digital one, we have to take back the idea of “lightness.” Not the lightness, as Paul Valéry put it, of “a feather lost in the sky, wandering without a destination,” but perhaps that of a bird, a swallow that knows where it comes from, knows what it is doing while it flies, and knows where it is going.
A lightness made of responsibility, determination, and precision in the message we want to give. The lightness that allows us to set down, to cut away, to leave behind all the excess weight.
The metrics, the content, everything.
All of this.
The lightness that allows us to live our identity fully, both digital and personal, private, to align them and, in the end, the lightness that will allow us to live fully what will in any case be a beautiful digital renaissance.
Thank you.
A few reflections
The digital paradox: beyond quantity, back to authenticity
We live in an age in which the speed of digital imposes a relentless pace of content production and consumption. Technology has changed not only how we communicate but also how we build and perceive our identity and the value of our work. For companies this becomes a challenge: on one side, the need to be present and relevant online; on the other, the risk of falling into the “content trap,” as Bharat Anand calls it in his book The Content Trap (I wrote about it here, and I warmly recommend reading it). In this setting, quality is often sacrificed to quantity, while the real potential of digital, meaningful connections and relationships, is neglected.
In my TEDx talk I explored these dynamics, starting from the central question of identity. Our physical identity, solid and well defined, now has to interact with a new dimension: digital identity. This new reality does not reflect; it duplicates and fragments our image. Digital identity, ruled by metrics and numbers, likes, followers, views, risks becoming a distorted reflection in which quantity becomes the measure of quality. And this holds not only for people but for companies and brands too. How do we get out of this trap? How do we build a digital presence that is authentic and relevant without falling into an obsession with metrics?
The content trap: when metrics replace value
In his book, Bharat Anand points to a risk many companies run today: what he calls the “content trap.” Companies often make the mistake of thinking that simply producing content, and a lot of it, is enough to succeed online. This leads to relentless production, trying to capture the audience’s attention through strategies aimed at virality and immediate performance. The problem, as I also point out in my TEDx talk, is that quantity is not quality, and measuring success only through metrics can distort the perception of real value.
Metrics were born to guide our choices, and they have become the goal.
Likes, views, and followers are read as signs of success, but do they really represent the quality of the content? I am convinced that the real strength of digital lies not in content alone but in the connections we manage to create through that content. This is where many companies fail: they create a constant flow of content but do not bother to build genuine relationships with their audience. This not only alienates customers; it can also compromise the brand’s identity.
In my talk I proposed a path, hard but walkable, that points to a return to “slowness” and “lightness,” two orderly, precise ideas that stand against the frenzy of digital. Digital offers extraordinary opportunities to create deep and lasting connections, but only if we are willing to slow down and reflect on what we really want to communicate. It is time to stop chasing metrics, virality, and presence at any cost, and to start talking with our customers in an authentic way.
Slowness as a strategy
In my TEDx talk I brought up the idea of “slowness.” In a digital world where we are bombarded with information at a relentless pace, slowness is an act of strategic rebellion. For companies, it means no longer producing content in series just to feed algorithms and metrics, and starting to build genuine dialogues and lasting relationships with their audience. Value in digital does not lie in the content itself but in how that content is connected to people and to the other elements of the digital ecosystem.
For a business owner or a company director, this means rethinking the role of content. It is no longer just about reaching as many people as possible in as little time as possible, but about building a path of genuine engagement. Slowness does not mean inefficiency; it means reflection and strategy. Creating content that invites reflection rather than immediate reaction helps build relationships of trust with customers. Not every piece of content has to go viral, but every piece has to carry meaning and lasting value.
Think, for example, of publishing a post on social media. We often focus on the immediate impact: how many likes, how many comments, how many shares. But are those numbers really a sign of the value we are generating? If instead we focus on content that stirs a deeper dialogue with our audience, we get more authentic and lasting connections. This is the real strength of digital: the ability to build networks of people connected by shared interests, values, and goals.
Lightness and responsibility: a new philosophy for digital success
Another key idea of my TEDx talk is lightness, in the sense Italo Calvino gives it in Six Memos for the Next Millennium. Lightness, here, is not to be confused with superficiality. On the contrary, it means precision, responsibility, and determination in how we communicate online. In digital we tend to overload our messages with redundant, meaningless content in an attempt to be everywhere, all the time. But this strategy risks weighing the brand down and making it less authentic.
The strength of digital lies in the ability to create ecosystems in which content and people interact naturally and fluidly. Lightness, as I understand it, is exactly this: learning to let go of everything that is superfluous and focusing only on the content that creates value and real relationships. Instead of piling up metrics, we should think about how to free the potential of our brand through targeted, clear, meaningful messages.
A company that communicates with lightness knows where it is going and why. It is not a slave to metrics; it uses data as a tool for finding its way, not as an end. This approach, which combines slowness and lightness, makes it possible to create content that not only reaches the audience but involves it and makes it feel part of a wider community. This is how a brand can stand out and thrive in the long run, building a reputation based on real values and real connections.
Getting out of the content trap: the strategies
My TEDx talk and Bharat Anand’s book converge on one fundamental point: real success in the digital world is not measured by the quantity of content or by superficial metrics, but by the quality of the connections we manage to build. Companies have to stop chasing empty metrics and start creating content that generates real value and genuine relationships. This requires a change of mindset: from the frenzy of continuous production to reflective slowness; from viral superficiality to responsible lightness.
Business owners and senior managers have the opportunity today to lead this change. Getting out of the content trap means investing in strategies that value dialogue and connection over mere numerical performance. It means creating a digital ecosystem in which the brand is not just a producer of content but a point of reference for its audience. This is how the digital future can be faced with more awareness, authenticity, and success.
If you are trying to build a digital strategy that goes beyond metrics and puts the quality of connections at the center, it is time to adopt a new outlook: slow down, reflect, and communicate with quality. The kind of quality that attracts and develops proactive contacts. This will not only set you apart; it will also give you the chance to build genuine, lasting relationships with your audience.
The role of the business strategist
To do this, especially in a digital world as complex, fragmented, and changeable as today’s, the business strategist is essential. A business strategist does not just plan short-term actions or optimize superficial metrics: the role is to guide companies along a path of growth founded on genuine connections, value creation, and long-term strategies. The business strategist is the one who can balance the use of technology with a human, deep outlook, always keeping attention on the coherence of the company’s identity and on the dialogue with its audience. (I wrote about the role in The business strategist.)
In the landscape described by a certain modern, solid body of literature, which I touch on in my TEDx talk, this professional becomes an indispensable guide for avoiding the sterility of communication based only on the race for quantitative performance, and for building solid systems of digital relationships oriented toward connection. The task is to create an integrated vision in which every action, every piece of content, and every decision fits into a wider frame consistent with the company’s values. The business strategist is also the one who knows how to manage slowness and lightness, creating content that not only performs in numbers but builds relationships and communities over time. In an ever more competitive market, having at your side a professional who can think strategically and systemically makes the difference between a digital presence that merely follows trends and one that manages to create a real, lasting impact.
For more information, get in touch.