The next great leap of the digital age is, quite literally, going to hit you in the wallet. Those dollar bills you fold up and stash away are headed, with inexorable certainty, toward cryptographically sealed digital streams, stored on a microchip-loaded “smart card” (a plastic card with a microchip), a palm-sized ‘electronic wallet’ (a calculator-sized reader and loader for those cards), or the hard disk of your computer, wired for buying sprees at the virtual mall.
Predictor: Levy, Steven
Prediction, in context:In a 1994 article for Wired magazine, Steven Levy covers the future of electronic money. Levy writes: ”The next great leap of the digital age is, quite literally, going to hit you in the wallet. Those dollar bills you fold up and stash away are headed, with inexorable certainty, toward cryptographically sealed digital streams, stored on a microchip-loaded ‘smart card’ (a plastic card with a microchip), a palm-sized ‘electronic wallet’ (a calculator-sized reader and loader for those cards), or the hard disk of your computer, wired for buying sprees at the virtual mall.”
Biography:Steven Levy was a 1990s technology journalist. He wrote on the topic for decades for such publications as Newsweek and Wired. He is the author of the books “Hackers,” “Artificial Life” and “Crypto.” (Author/Editor/Journalist.)
Date of prediction: December 1, 1994
Topic of prediction: Economic structures
Subtopic: E-cash
Name of publication: Wired
Title, headline, chapter name: E-Money (That’s What I Want)
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/2.12/emoney_pr.html
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Lusk, James T.