Experiences – Life – Inspiration 🇨🇭🇯🇵

I never thought much about identity growing up in Switzerland.

It existed quietly in the background. A number for social security. A registry entry somewhere in a municipal office. Functional, necessary, but distant. Identity was something you lived, not something you logged into.

In the Netherlands, identity became more practical. The BSN number followed you through work, taxes, healthcare. Efficient, structured, integrated into daily administration. Yet still, it remained largely invisible. A tool of bureaucracy, not a presence in consciousness.

Then I moved to Japan and received my My Number.

For the first time, identity felt formalized. Packaged. Introduced with explanation, campaigns, incentives. A plastic card with a chip. A number that promised convenience. Tax filings made easier. Certificates printed at convenience stores. Healthcare integration on the horizon.

And with that formalization came a subtle inner question.

When identity becomes digital, what exactly is being digitized?

Because identity, in the human sense, has never been administrative.

It is memory. Culture. Relationships. Experience. Migration. Language. Belonging. The invisible threads that shape how we move through the world.

No card can hold that.

Yet digital systems do not attempt to capture the poetry of identity. They capture its utility. They translate a human life into administrative coordinates. Name. Birthdate. Residency. Tax record. Insurance status.

Efficient. Necessary. Scalable.

But also reductive.

Every system that increases convenience asks for something in return. Usually, that something is data. Structured, standardized, interoperable data. Data that allows institutions to recognize you without meeting you.

This is not new.

Passports digitized borders long before digital IDs digitized citizens. Social security numbers reduced complex lives into eligibility categories. Databases replaced filing cabinets.

Digital ID is simply the next layer. Faster. Smarter. More connected.

The philosophical tension does not come from what these systems do today. Filing taxes online is hardly dystopian. Printing a residence certificate at midnight from a convenience store is, if anything, a small miracle of modern governance.

The tension comes from trajectory.

Infrastructure shapes possibility.

Once identity exists as a digital key, it can unlock convenience. It can also, theoretically, restrict access. To services. To platforms. To movement. Not because that is the intent today, but because the architecture makes it possible tomorrow.

And so the debate around digital identity is rarely about administration. It is about trust.

How much trust do we place in institutions that hold the keys to our digital selves?

Switzerland answered that question through decentralization. Trust the citizen. Fragment the data. Move slowly.

The Netherlands answered through efficiency. Trust the system. Integrate the services. Optimize the experience.

Japan seems to answer through order. Trust the structure. Standardize the processes. Harmonize administration.

None of these answers are inherently wrong. They simply reflect cultural philosophies translated into infrastructure.

Digital identity does not emerge in a vacuum. It emerges from how societies view the relationship between individual and state.

Is the state a service provider?

A coordinator?

A guardian?

A supervisor?

Your answer shapes how intrusive a digital ID feels.

Living across three systems taught me something unexpected.

The card itself is not what defines freedom.

Freedom lives in governance, law, limitation, and cultural norms surrounding the card.

A number can exist quietly in the background or loudly at the center of civic life. The difference is not technological. It is philosophical.

When identity becomes digital, the real question is not what the system knows about you.

The real question is what the system is allowed to do with what it knows.

And perhaps even deeper than that.

Do we remain human beings navigating institutions?

Or do we gradually become institutional profiles navigating systems designed to manage us efficiently?

For now, digital identity sits in an in-between space. Useful, evolving, watched with both appreciation and suspicion.

Convenience on one side. Autonomy on the other.

And like most modern infrastructures, it expands not through force but through usefulness.

One service at a time. One integration at a time. One incentive at a time.

Until one day, we may look back and realize identity did not suddenly become digital.