Chequered future

Farewell, then, bank cheques: after 300 years of supremacy For the inevitable reason that banks find them too expensive. It's going to be increasing hard to be a 21st-century Luddite as there is no machinery to smash up: the technology is all virtual, in cyberspace.

For those people who find money scary enough to keep their cash under the bed, the days of such subterfuge may be numbered. Now matter how susceptible to hacking, online banking is like a super-massive black hole, sucking all other ways of keeping account into its midst.

Generational shift is no longer generational. Paradigms are changing on an exponential curve akin to Moore's law for computing power: ways of dealing with the modern world seem to be doubling in difficulty at least every 18 months.