People and movement would soon be treated the same as “any package, pallet or container” - with these physical objects at the time tracked only by radio frequency identification (RFID) tags, sensors, and transmitters.

That idea seems to have matured in the meanwhile with a number of digital ID and tracking initiatives that have come out of this year’s gathering in Davos, and the new WEF/WTO report notes that not only movement and location, but also performance and contribution to “a global circular economy” can be monitored thanks to traceability.

There’s also a name for what a future set on such foundations is likely to spawn: “digital dictatorships.” Control and monitoring has been at the heart of any dictatorship since the dawn of time, and the digital world is providing more tools than ever to achieve just that.