“You’ll own nothing and be happy.”
The quote was famously stated in a 2016 Medium article by Ida Auken, a member of the Danish parliament, countering the foundational aspects of how ownership and humanity have intermingled through history. Contrastingly, Russell W. Belk, a Business and Research Professor, proposed the theory of the extended self, where possessions become an integral part of one’s identity, thus being vital to our perception of self. As society assumes there’s a lean towards overconsumption and materialism, trends reflect that we own less than before. Books that once crowded shelves as prized collections have morphed from tangible physicality into digital formats. CDs and Vinyl have been replaced with monthly subscriptions – and it is labeled as convenience. The trade-off has logical arguments, but what happens when ownership is replaced by the trade of intellectual data?
The modern “self,” then, is being built on things we do own, but extensions of data trails that others control.
In Belk’s article “Possessions and the Extended Self” (1988), possessions are relational to identity and personal control. Some examples mentioned include family heirlooms, which encapsulate ancestral ties and continuity, while a man’s car is often seen as an extension of his ego. As digital possessions begin to emulate similar relationships with identity, personalized playlists and profiles become illusory possessions that are not controlled by individual agency.
In a more recent 2025 interview with A History of Marketing, Belk notes how technological advancements have shifted ownership, stating, “Yeah, the extended self, in a sentence, is you are what you own; you are what you possess. And in a digital world, you are what you portray yourself as online on social media.”
While the 21st century is largely defined by the internet, Auken’s essay imagines the future of convenience shared through access and how that replaces self-determination with algorithmic convenience. The cost, ultimately, is privacy and the nature of individuality.
“Once in a while I get annoyed about the fact that I have no real privacy. Nowhere I can go and not be registered. I know that, somewhere, everything I do, think and dream of is recorded. I just hope that nobody will use it against me,” remarks Auken in her satirical imagination of the year 2030.
Recent studies have shown that an individual’s data is treated as a corporate possession, as evidenced by a recent news report from the Irish Data Protection Commission, which fined TikTok €530M (EU, 2025) for transferring data to China. The uncanny reality lies in who truly owns the account, the application, and the corporation through which messages and photos are shared.
According to Tech Policy Press, the European Union’s “Right to Be Forgotten” was established to enable individuals to reclaim certain aspects of their digital identities. Allowing individuals to ask that search engines, platforms, or companies delete personal data that no longer serves a purpose. But as artificial intelligence systems evolve, this right faces unprecedented challenges.
Although the European Data Protection Board (EDPB) has ruled that AI developers can be considered data controllers under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), enforcement remains technically and legally unclear. Regulators may mandate deletion, but AI companies often argue that technical constraints make compliance impossible. Once personal data has been absorbed into a neural network’s training set, removing it may be as difficult as “unbaking a cake.” Across the Atlantic, the United States offers less protection.
Whereas there was once the freedom to detach from our objects, digital possessions are exerting permanence, unlike their inanimate predecessors. Belk’s concept of possession fails and could not have foreseen extensions of self that are replicated, dissolved, and immortal.
The transition from tangible possessions to digital identities reveals both progress and peril. As convenience replaces control and data replaces ownership, Belk’s theory of the extended self demands re-examination. Our sense of identity now depends not on what we keep, but on what we can retrieve, or what others allow us to forget.
