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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;-jeffB, post: 1560033, member: 27832&quot;]I wish we could go back in time to meet our great-grandparents, walking to the country store clutching their small purses of Real Money (silver coins), and enter into a discussion about the &quot;privacy and anonymity&quot; that they enjoyed during their shopping. We <i>might</i> be able to explain ourselves well enough to earn a good laugh from them. More likely, though, we&#039;d never get past the &quot;what are you trying to hide?&quot; stage.</p><p><br /></p><p>Anonymity and untrackability are not unmixed blessings. When I&#039;ve lost a credit card, or had my credit information stolen, I&#039;ve never had to make good on bogus charges. On most shopping trips, I&#039;d lose more if I were mugged for my basket of groceries than if I were mugged for my wallet. Remember, cash isn&#039;t only anonymous and untrackable for the people who earn, spend or accept it, it&#039;s anonymous and untrackable for the people who steal, lose or extort it.</p><p><br /></p><p>Really, though, I think all this attention to cash vs. credit is just a distraction from the greater changes that are coming. Do you really care whether They know how much you spent at the store, when They have security-cam footage of your every step as you gather the items and put them in your cart? Traffic- and law-enforcement footage of your path to and from the store, the bar, the house of that &quot;good friend&quot; that you occasionally visit when your spouse thinks you&#039;re working late?</p><p><br /></p><p>We can&#039;t anonymize our entire lives, but we can -- and will -- soon <i>document</i> our entire lives. The image of &quot;privacy&quot; we have today <i>will</i> be one casualty of that &quot;progress&quot;. And our great-grandchildren will variously shake their heads at our childish paranoia, or long wistfully for the old days of innocence, or just struggle to understand what all the fuss was about.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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