Difference between revisions of "Being a Person"
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More and more of our daily life experiences are mediated by digital experiences. We check the weather and traffic before heading out on a trip. We pay for goods and services using some sort of digital computing device, perhaps a smart card, or more frequently now a smartphone. Several countries have issued digital identifiers to all citizens and passports come with a digital chip embedded in them. During 2024 there has been a major push to supply state-issued IDs that can be installed on a mobile device based on standards like ISO 18013-5 or W3C Verifiable Credentials. Does this push imply that without a smartphone credential you will not be a person in the evolving digitally enhanced state? | More and more of our daily life experiences are mediated by digital experiences. We check the weather and traffic before heading out on a trip. We pay for goods and services using some sort of digital computing device, perhaps a smart card, or more frequently now a smartphone. Several countries have issued digital identifiers to all citizens and passports come with a digital chip embedded in them. During 2024 there has been a major push to supply state-issued IDs that can be installed on a mobile device based on standards like ISO 18013-5 or W3C Verifiable Credentials. Does this push imply that without a smartphone credential you will not be a person in the evolving digitally enhanced state? | ||
| − | Statistics on people and digital devices are not directly applicable to this question, but the best available data is from Pew Research about the recent US population. We know that of 340 million people in the US 10 million over the age of 10 do not have a cell phone and 40 million are under the age of 10. We will use the number 50 million for an approximation of those that will not be able to acquire a digital identifier. We will also assume that all the rest have access to online facilities. A 2020 report by AARP estimates that 1/3 of the adults over 65 do not use electronic bill payments. That would be 55 million adults in 2024. Without any better estimates, we will guess that 25 million will not be able to handle digital identifiers with any facility | + | Statistics on people and digital devices are not directly applicable to this question, but the best available data is from Pew Research about the recent US population. We know that of 340 million people in the US 10 million over the age of 10 do not have a cell phone and 40 million are under the age of 10. We will use the number 50 million for an approximation of those that will not be able to acquire a digital identifier. We will also assume that all the rest have access to online facilities. A [https://www.aarp.org/money/credit-loans-debt/info-2020/how-to-pay-bills-online.html 2020 report by AARP] estimates that 1/3 of the adults over 65 do not use electronic bill payments. That would be 55 million adults in 2024. Without any better estimates, we will guess that 25 million will not be able to handle digital identifiers with any facility were they to be widely available today. Those estimates would mean that 75 million persons in the US would not be able to use digital identifiers even if everyone had one in theory. |
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| + | Would the US tolerate disenfranchising people without digital identifiers? I doubt it. So how can a digital ecosystem be rolled out while excluding 75 million persons in the US. This will only happen if that digital ecosystem were designed to include these people and that is not on the agenda of any of the current programs to create such an ecosystem. What we see is that the current batch of digital wallets focuses on the 80% of the population while only putting in 20% of the work to deliver an inclusive product. A perfect Pareto solution. The fear is that fixing a Pareto solution to handle the rest of the population will be much harder to complete than starting with a complete solution from the beginning. That will unnecessarily create a new class of the underserved that will be difficult to accommodate for many years into the future. Let’s not do that. | ||
==References== | ==References== | ||
| + | * See wiki page on [[MDL Considered Harmful]] | ||
| + | * See wiki page on [[Digital Inclusion]] | ||
| − | [[Category: | + | [[Category: Ethics]] |
| + | [[Category: Inclusion]] | ||
Latest revision as of 15:30, 30 August 2024
Full Title
Being a Person in a Digital Ecosystem – a reality check
Context
More and more of our daily life experiences are mediated by digital experiences. We check the weather and traffic before heading out on a trip. We pay for goods and services using some sort of digital computing device, perhaps a smart card, or more frequently now a smartphone. Several countries have issued digital identifiers to all citizens and passports come with a digital chip embedded in them. During 2024 there has been a major push to supply state-issued IDs that can be installed on a mobile device based on standards like ISO 18013-5 or W3C Verifiable Credentials. Does this push imply that without a smartphone credential you will not be a person in the evolving digitally enhanced state?
Statistics on people and digital devices are not directly applicable to this question, but the best available data is from Pew Research about the recent US population. We know that of 340 million people in the US 10 million over the age of 10 do not have a cell phone and 40 million are under the age of 10. We will use the number 50 million for an approximation of those that will not be able to acquire a digital identifier. We will also assume that all the rest have access to online facilities. A 2020 report by AARP estimates that 1/3 of the adults over 65 do not use electronic bill payments. That would be 55 million adults in 2024. Without any better estimates, we will guess that 25 million will not be able to handle digital identifiers with any facility were they to be widely available today. Those estimates would mean that 75 million persons in the US would not be able to use digital identifiers even if everyone had one in theory.
Would the US tolerate disenfranchising people without digital identifiers? I doubt it. So how can a digital ecosystem be rolled out while excluding 75 million persons in the US. This will only happen if that digital ecosystem were designed to include these people and that is not on the agenda of any of the current programs to create such an ecosystem. What we see is that the current batch of digital wallets focuses on the 80% of the population while only putting in 20% of the work to deliver an inclusive product. A perfect Pareto solution. The fear is that fixing a Pareto solution to handle the rest of the population will be much harder to complete than starting with a complete solution from the beginning. That will unnecessarily create a new class of the underserved that will be difficult to accommodate for many years into the future. Let’s not do that.
References
- See wiki page on MDL Considered Harmful
- See wiki page on Digital Inclusion
