Monday: the look stopped working. Today: what we put in its place.

Monday: the look stopped working. Today: what we put in its place.

12.

German law, Personalausweisgesetz § 5 (2), lists 12 numbered items printed on a national ID card. Name. Given names. Doctoral degree. Date and place of birth. Photograph. Signature. Height. Eye colour. Address. Nationality. Serial number. Religious order and pen name.

Item 4 is the one to sit with. The door asked "over 18?" — the card answers with the exact day, and the town.

Then the law gets more interesting. § 1 (1): you must hold an ID from 16. § 1 (4): below 16 you may have one on request. So today a newborn can hold one. When Oma was 12, no child did. Not because it was forbidden — because no door needed it.

The doors got along without documents for decades. Then documents became universal, and the doors started asking.

Three ways to check an age:

The look, 1963 — 1 bit, often wrong.
The document, today — 12 items, always right.
What's missing — 1 bit, always right.

That third line is the whole job. It's what we're building, and it's what we showed in Nijmegen last week.