Those of you who have been around Irreal for a while are aware of my quest to ditch my wallet and be able to leave my house and conduct my business with nothing but my iPhone. I am getting closer. My house has digital locks, my credit cards are in my digital wallet on my phone, and now, finally, I have a digital license.
Florida still hasn’t officially rolled out its digital license program but you can download the license app and, if you’re particularly persistent, you can get it registered and activated with the state. Doubtless the program will be completely rolled out in the next week or two. Of course, Florida law still requires that I carry my physical license when I’m driving but I expect that the law will be amended to say that the digital license suffices. As a practical matter, police officers probably won’t even ask to see your physical license because they can more easily capture your information from the digital license.
So where am I? I feel like I still need a physical credit card because there are a few recalcitrant merchants who haven’t enabled NFC and, thus, Apple Pay. So I still need to carry a license and a credit card as backup even though I can theoretically get along without them. That leaves only the car.
I’m hoping that the next car will have digital locks and ignition so that I no longer have to carry car keys. Once that happens, I will have essentially realized my ambition to have my every day carry down to my phone. In my saner moments, I recognize that this is definitely a first world problem but I view it as another step in obtaining a digital life. Really, why should we still be carrying around pieces of paper to verify information that could just as easily be provided digitally?