Just a year before this article, everyone thought smart cards were the wave of the future. All of your credit cards, IDs, and medical records were going to be stored on one card.

The rest of the world did move on to smart cards in limited form, from phone cards to credit cards. The USA never did implement these cool ideas; and our credit-card companies JUST NOW put chips in their cards... but then blew it by still resorting to signatures instead of PINs.