My passport may be my most precious possession: it lets me travel more or less where I want to andenables me to come back home after my adventures. But it also helps the border control officers along my journey understand where I’ve been and how long I was there, to build a more complete picture of methan they can get just by looking at my tired, jet-lagged person (and let’s be honest: I love getting stamps in my paper passport, something that will likely go away once everything is digitalized).

If Soon, some manufactured items may also have passports that accompany them throughout their lives. These digital passports could include information about an item’s design, material makeup, when and how it was produced, how it wasused and maintained, and other relevant data.

This article appeared in the July 2024 issue of BENCHMARK.