FANCY becoming an Estonian? There are plenty of reasons why you would. The tiny Baltic country is a technology powerhouse, with digital infrastructure as good as anywhere, online elections and compulsory coding classes. Now some of the benefits its 1.3 million citizens enjoy are open to all: Estonia will let anyone (see 鈥�E-citizens unite: Estonia opens its digital borders鈥�).
E-residency isn鈥檛 citizenship 鈥� you won鈥檛 be able to vote, or move there unless you are already entitled to. But it will allow you to access Estonia鈥檚 excellent online services, such as banking and the incorporation of companies. These currently require a physical address, but will soon be as easy as opening an email account.
Estonia鈥檚 move offers a tantalising hint of a new world order that transcends the nation state. At present many of the services we are entitled to are an accident of where we were born. But when the functions of the state shift online, there鈥檚 no longer a reason to restrict them to physical residents. Soon, digital residency could become as important, if not more so.
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And digital residency can be a matter of choice. In the market that will emerge, even cities will compete. Paris has already shown an interest in allowing outsiders to become e-Parisians.
How this will all play out is unclear. Once more people are e-residents than actually live within a country鈥檚 borders, who gets to vote? Who pays taxes? Does a country even need a physical location any more?
It is hard to come up with answers to these questions, in part because concepts of nationality and nationhood are so deeply ingrained in how we see ourselves and the world. But these concepts are a relatively recent invention in response to the upheavals of the industrial revolution (New 杏吧原创, 6 September, p 30).
Though it is widely agreed that the nation state model has begun to outlive its usefulness, what will follow is not at all obvious. The experiments in Estonia and Paris may point the way.
This article appeared in print under the headline 鈥淭he e-citizen test鈥�