How Estonia Is Building the Future That We All Need

We are still at a 50/50 split as to whether technology will help to alleviate us from our physically demanding jobs or whether it will take over all electronics and rid us of our biological life. Some countries aren’t waiting around for machines to make the move first.

Estonia, or should I say, e-Estonia is betting that technology is here to help us live more fulfilling lives and they are embracing a fully connected and fully digital society in which every citizen is plugged into the network from birth and where you can vote with the touch of a button. Unlike the Matrix however, citizens are aware of the fact and they seem to be working with it and not fighting it.

How is Estonia tackling this human and technological merge? In surprisingly advanced ways that most other countries are still decades away from implementing. And that’s because Estonia has been working on this since 1994.

Digital ID

The central core of Estonia’s digital ecosystem is it’s digital ID system in which a unique and public ID is assigned to each citizen either at birth or whenever the person becomes an official citizen. That sounds dystopian. So let’s go a bit deeper into it, because I don’t think it’s as evil as the movies make it out to be.