In sixteen pages small cards, their purpose and their many uses are discussed. Nine sources are cited in the bibliography.
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paper bills? An economy in which value is transferred through means other than cash or even credit cards. Not only is it possible, millions of people around the world are
using different kinds of money. Think: debit cards with the money deducted directly from ones checking account; prepaid phone cards that give the user so many minutes or hours of
phone calls that they paid for in advance. There is also another card being used - the Smart Card. This is a substitute for cash, credit cards and debit cards.
The reader may remember a television commercial that has been aired during the last year or so. In this commercial, a rather unkempt man goes through a supermarket, picking
up this and that and stuffing it in the big pockets of a trench coat-like coat. A security guard is following the man. The man goes through a machine that
looks like a metal detector and as he heads for the door, the guard snarls at him and says: "you forgot your receipt" (or something similar). This is a commercial
from IBM (if I remember correctly). Wouldnt it be great if we could just go through a store, pick up things and even put them in our pockets and then
just pass through some sort of device and everything we have is automatically "rung up" and the machine gives us a receipt in a matter of seconds? No doubt, this
sounds like some sort of science fiction fantasy to many but so did traveling to the moon and 40 years ago, who would have believed such a large proportion of
individuals and families would be sitting in front of personal computers? In fact, the possibility of us buying our groceries or anything else in this fashion will be commonplace in