Identity is the New Money. David Birch

because a great many politicians have called for the same thing without having any idea of how it might be achieved.

      Such calls demonstrate that it is hard to think about identity and related issues in a networked world using the mental models of the ‘old’ world. As described here, though, we’ve been here before. The emergence of the modern passport involved more than the development of new technologies and techniques to document individual identity. It also required a critical rethinking of identification and identity.26 The result was, it is fair to argue, the emergence of a new identity, one distinct from how people had previously thought of themselves. The emergence of a new passport equivalent will lead, yet again, to a new form of identity, yet again distinct from how we think about ourselves now.

      Chapter 3

      A new identity for a new world

      The fantastic advances in the field of electronic communications constitute a greater danger to the privacy of the individual.