Those of you who have been following along for a while, know that I try to live a digital lifestyle as much as I can. In the US, the meaning of “digital lifestyle” is essentially trivial. It means I eschew paper and pens, use Apple Pay for my credit card purchases, do my banking on-line, and minimize the size of my wallet by putting as much as possible into my iPhone Wallet app. If the State of Florida would stop futzing around, I could add a digital drivers license to my iPhone and get rid of my physical wallet altogether.
I could do a bit more. I could build out a “smart home” but that technology is still young and has a lot of problems. Our next car will almost certainly have the door locks and ignition tied to my phone but then what?
What would a true digital society look like? China sort of has one on the “front end” in that (at least urban) citizens can conduct a lot of their business digitally but I don’t think they qualify as a digital society yet. If we look to Science Fiction for an answer, we find things like Iain M. Banks Culture novels, which represent an extreme view of a digital society.
It turns out that we don’t have to guess. There is already a truly digital society: Estonia. In a Quartz article by Kersti Kaljulaid, the president of Estonia, we learn that when Estonia regained its freedom after the fall of the Soviet Union, they were a poor country with no government infrastructure. Estonians made the difficult and risky decision to build a digital society from the ground up. Today, they are enjoying the fruits of that decision. There are very few things that can’t be done digitally. Kaljulaid offers getting married and buying property as examples.
Everyone has a digital ID that they can use to transact virtually all their business. That’s a situation ripe for abuse, of course, but Estonia has taken specific steps to protect their citizens. A citizen’s data belongs to the citizen, not the state and they can see who has accessed it. The article has some further details so be sure to take a look if you’re interested in the subject.
Kaljulaid recounts a revealing vignette that illustrates how accustomed Estonians have become to doing things digitally. At one point a flaw was discovered with the digital IDs so before it could be exploited, the government replaced them. That meant that people had to go to a police station to get their replacement. Kaljulaid says that social media exploded with horror stories about people having to stand in line for the replacements. They should try out American DMVs to see what real pain is.
There’s a lot more information in the article, including the steps Estonia has taken to safeguard their citizens’ data, so be sure to take a look. If you’re wondering what a digital society could look like, Estonia gives you a good example. You might also want to take a look at their e-estonia website for a bit more information.