I found it hard to leave Budapest when I was there last year. Not because I’d enjoyed the city (though I did), but because I had to queue for so long to get my boarding pass that I almost missed the flight – 007 never had that problem. I mention the famous agent because arriving in Copenhagen a few months earlier felt like being in a Bond movie; I was actually asked the reason for my visit, and received an entry stamp in my blue British passport. However, the United Kingdom today announced the first steps toward a future in which it will engage with its citizens digitally in almost every sphere whilst elsewhere the credentials needed to get from one country to another are already leaving paper behind.
Of course every aspect of travel has evolved over time, from the speed of the journey itself to the level of luxury, convenience and cost associated with that trip. A century ago, airship operators boasted of their ability to convey passengers between Europe and the Americas in two just days compared to the three or four it would take by ocean liner. Aeroplanes made the crossing in even less time, and after the war jets slashed it again.
With eating, drinking and sleeping the established measures of quality on land, ships and aircraft employed bone china, cut glass and polished silver to provide a fine-dining experience of their own, whilst a good berth for the night was offered through the ingenious planning of aircraft seats, ships’ cabins and train carriages. Even our luggage has changed, from heavy trunks moved by porters and decorated with destination labels to anonymised suitcases with slick surfaces, retractable handles and multiple wheels.
Written documents to allow this journeying have a very long history, although the passport originally acted merely as a letter of recommendation to safeguard the traveller as he passed through strange territories. To that end a physical description of the bearer started to be provided, although the passport itself was simply a piece of paper, signed, folded and sealed as needed – leather wallets to protect this increasingly important item began to appear in the nineteenth century.
Through the industrialised conflicts of that age, the passport became a signifier of statehood as well as a proof of identity. Royal crests or other coats of arms appeared, saying as much if not more about the issuer than the bearer. And as printing technology improved, smaller booklets with multiple pages became the norm whilst watermarks, embossing and – in the early twentieth century – a photograph of the person to whom the passport referred upgraded security and sought to combat counterfeiting.
Now standardised in size and features throughout the world, individual governments differentiate their passports through increasingly lavish and complex designs with ever-better security that take what can be achieved with paper to another level.
Many showcase the flora and fauna of their country, perhaps intending to convey a sense of calm and universal appeal (thinking about it rulers, inventors and cultural figures tend to be confined to currency). Others look at seas and shorelines, or are even more ethereal, highlighting the stars and the skies. A few states take a rather individual and amusing approach – I love Belgium’s, whose illustrated pages insert famous cartoon characters from that country into famous destinations. All employ coloured inks (including those that show up only in ultraviolet light), holograms, foil, carefully-cut patterns and much more to act as a defence against unauthorised reproduction.
For many of us in our online lives our passport is the only physical representation of nationality we have, a tangible connection with our home country as we float through the shopping-mall-like world of the modern airport on or way to somewhere else. Many Britons, on the other hand, bitter at Brexit, feel ‘marooned’ without their EU document in mandatory burgundy.
But even without today’s move by Britain to provide an app on which to store a digital driving licence, precursor of a fully digital tool through which one can interact with the government, it is already possible to navigate Beijing’s new airport without any physical document at all. Dutch firm SITA’s Smart Path – “Your face is your boarding pass” – allows passengers to scan their biometric passport’s chip with their phone as a comparator when presenting oneself at facial recognition terminals at security, passport control, baggage drop and even boarding (the chip holding a much more detailed image than that printed visibly). Of course this idea engages certain concerns of a socio-political nature given the country concerned, but others are following suit and it seems unlikely to be a slow transition. If the EU’s Entry/Exit System ever appears, passports – which for Brits have had to be stamped since Brexit but which now won’t, again – will be less vital anyway.
In Around the World in Eighty Days, Jules Verne wrote that “it is by no means useless to travel, if a man wants to see something new”; he was speaking through his character Jean Passepartout, whose surname translates as ‘goes everywhere’ and also nods to the word for the document that has historically enabled that endeavour. For now, leaving your passport behind is not the best way to start such a journey; soon it might be the only way.
I just hope we might occasionally still be asked ‘business or pleasure?’
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