don't see fred often but now two in one day and both do a fine job of making clear his points;

How time flies, said Fred with scintillating originality. When I was a young lad in rural Virginia in the mid-Sixties, the only thing digital was the local drive-in movie, known colloquially as the Finger bowl. Now the world runneth over with bits and bytes and screens and all. Regarding which:

Much of the unpleasantness of life springs from the need to identify ourselves. To this end we have driver’s licenses, passports, ID , and credit cards.

None of this is really necessary. Let us assume hypothetically that face recognition is infallible. It isn’t, quite, but let us pretend. We would then not need a driver’s license: The cop would scan your face and your license, if any, would pop up on his screen. No passport either: Coming into America the camera would scan your face and all your passport info would pop up. To fly, you would not need a ticket or need to check in: The system would scan your face and know you had a ticket for UAL 3325 to Chengdu

Actually face recognition is not quite perfect, so to get admission to the CIA’s murder records you might need an additional scan of iris or fingerprints, which would leave no doubt. This latter is now used at air ports: “Put your fingers on the glass….”......more.....