Dateline: October 28 2028
Stina Svensson looked at her ID, her passport, the title deed for her house, her latest tax return ... all laid out in front of her and, until two months ago, proving who she was, that she was Stina Svensson.
But today was not her day: the bank manager couldn’t do anything to help as she didn’t exist in their system. Her savings were gone, her investments had vanished, her mortgage had disappeared (which at €908,000 outstanding was maybe a good thing) but the fact remained: she didn’t exist.
It all started a couple of months ago when she made, in her opinion, an innocent comment on a Facebook post. Forty minutes later her account was frozen because she had violated the code of conduct; but she could appeal. Which she did. But 24 hours later the result came back: not successful, and her account and profile vanished. As did her Messenger and Instagram accounts.
A few days later her WhatsApp account wouldn’t work, and when she tried to reinstall the app it refused her credentials. Her phone stopped working, and her subway card got blocked. Then it escalated faster and faster as the AIs running various systems compared notes. With no social media posts, no WhatsApp messages, no phone calls and no usage of the subway, they came to the obvious conclusion that Svensson didn’t exist.
The AIs went to work and ensured that the tax register was corrected, birth records were updated, and last night came the final straw when her bank account got deleted. She had been erased from the digital world by hyperefficient, autonomous and connected AI agents operating on logic, without any human oversight.
Stina Svensson had been cancelled!
First published in Mindbullets 28 November 2024.
I am ether. I am me. Provable identity is the crypto killer app
Dateline: July 2 2025
There’s a dominant use case emerging for the Ethereum blockchain, a killer app that will make crypto as widely adopted as smartphones. And it isn’t money.
It’s all about digital property rights, identity and ownership. Public blockchains are essentially enormous multi-user databases. Decentralised and authenticated by the network itself, they allow anyone with a blockchain address to maintain their user data in a way that is transparent and protected. And being decentralised, your data is safe from search and seizure, even by government and international agencies.
So you can be in control of your own digital destiny, your identity, and your rights of ownership to both digital and physical property. It’s all part of being a sovereign individual, and not relying on institutions and authorities when it comes to proving you’re you. Blockchain records are immutable, and can only be updated by adding new blocks to the chain, so everything is recorded and encrypted, by design.
Now I don’t need a passport and a copy of a recent utility bill to identify myself. I can open a bank account, enter into smart contracts and invest in start-ups in a foreign country; just by sharing my trusted chain data. And of course, I can receive and make payments too.
My biometric data and health records are also securely stored on the network, and I can give access — and revoke it — to parts of my data, to people and applications. Like my doctor, or lawyer, or Siri.
Data, especially personal data, is fast becoming the oil of the 21st century global economy. Now I can control my personal information and identity, and no-one can hijack it and pretend they’re me.
I am ether; I am me.
First published in Mindbullets July 1 2021.
• Despite appearances to the contrary, Futureworld cannot and does not predict the future. The Mindbullets scenarios are fictitious and designed purely to explore possible futures, and challenge and stimulate strategic thinking.
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