YP Letters: Paperless society may still be a token gesture

We don't rely on computers and the internet for everything. (PA).

In the early 1960s, I received my Income Tax Code Number on a piece of paper about 4” x 6” (100m.m by 150m.m). It contained all the information which I might need and no less important information than I currently receive.

This year, as in many previously, my tax code came on three A4 sheets of paper, most of which is irrelevant.

Similarly my electricity bills, ‘back then’, came, hand written, on the same size and quality of paper. Presumably Ministry of Supply specification, shortly after the Second World War.

The ‘promise’ in December 1953 when LEO ( the Lyon’s Electronic Office) started to work that we would quickly have a ‘paperless society’ has not (yet) come into fruition.

Now I read that there are prognosticators who tell us that we are moving to a ‘cashless’ society.

Perhaps those who have lost much of their fortune through internet hacking may wish to renounce this. It could be that history would disagree, in that such an outcome would lead to the production of branded token coinages. Green stamps and Nectar points are examples of such tokens. Some of the 18th century tokens can be quite valuable.

Ho-hum; What goes around...