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Comment by lancesells | Hacker News Reader

My argument to all of this, at least in the US, is you don't need the internet to do things or be a person. Yes, it's 1000x more convenient (and cheaper) but you don't need to be online to do things with the government.

Maybe that changes in the near future but the internet is only as real as you make it.

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You're going to struggle to get a job or rent a house without using the Internet. That job will almost certainly require you to use the Internet for things like email, while the utilities on that house will send you increasingly absurd volumes of mail about switching to paperless. Some of them may not even have alternative payment that allow you to avoid the Internet.

Seems pretty real to me.

The internet is real so we need to make it as accessible as a utility.

Exactly and in the US you don't need a drivers license (generally a government-issued ID) to be a person. It helps but it’s not mandatory. The digital equivalent is signatures so digital society needs to be coerced to allow any signature. That doesn't preclude having certificates issued to you when you pass a driving test or meet residency requirements, but those aren’t sources of truth. Your personhood is.

> you don't need the internet to do things or be a person

The new paradigm is that everything has shifted online. The Internet is the proverbial town square. If you don't participate, that's on you, but all manner of discourse happens online now, and most importantly; that discourse shapes public opinion, and can have real lasting change in the world.

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