If you live in a wealthy country there are people that know things about you that you don’t know about yourself.

If you live in a developing country, you have the opposite problem – you don’t exist.

So let’s break this down.

If you live in a wealthy country you’re constantly giving this thing called the internet more information about you. I’m not talking about your access codes. Every time you click on something you create one data point about you.

This isn’t a problem in the short term because the data is just be used for targeting ads.

In the future, you will have a much bigger problem. For example, if all of those clicks were collected and analyzed a machine could create a psychological profile about you then use this information to help you… or use it against you, depending on who’s in charge of the machine.

If you live in a developing country, you have no physical ID and you might not even have a fixed address.

That means that there’s a long list of extremely important and useful services that can significantly improve your life that you cannot access because have no way to prove who you are.

In fact, you cannot even prove you exist.

Is your digital identity more important than your physical identity?

“Never forget what you are, for surely the world will not. Make it your strength. Then it can never be your weakness. Armour yourself in it, and it will never be used to hurt you.”

― George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones