Historical Marker 4/13/2013

Historical marker 4/12/2013...

I just returned from a visit to a local financial institution, the purpose of which was to find out what happened to a payment made there that never posted to the account.  Background: both the checking account and the loan account are with this one institution and the check was brought to the local branch and processed at the local branch, but never posted to the loan account.  I am sure we will soon find out what happened and get it straightened out.  But, here's the thing:  There was a time when the most trusted and common method for both billing the customer and receiving the payment was through the mail-- as in the US Postal Service.  Sure it took a couple days either direction, but most of the business happened that way and most everyone trusted that it would.  Not anymore.  Ok, I can live with that, actually.  So, we adapted and started hand-delivering the payments to the institution, in person.  But, after this last issue and the length of time and hassle it has taken to get answers and corrections, we adapted again-- by deciding the only way to "know" is to make the transfer online.

Think about that:  the most trusted method is electronic... online.

You can call me old, but it wasn't that long ago that there was no "online" because there was no internet.  When I graduated from college, there was no internet in use by the masses.  It was even more recently that people were extremely suspicious of conducting business online and having so much personal information vulnerable to internet security.  After all, one of the reasons people used to trust the mail is that using the mail to conduct fraud is called "mail fraud" and carries stiff penalties.  Regulators and law enforcement have openly conceded that there is very little they can do to prevent crimes online or to track down the perpetrators after the crimes have been committed.  Yet online transactions still provide the highest confidence and reassurance for business transactions.  Why?  I don’t know, because I can’t speak for everyone else.  My guess is the immediacy of everything.  That, and an intangible confidence in something referred to as encryption.  Or, maybe it is the relative ease with which a correction can be made, allowing the investigation to happen later and drag out—out of sight and out of mind to the rest of us.

Whatever the reason, history will have to report that in this day and age, the US Postal Service is struggling and more and more of our lives are lived out electronically:  through phones, hand-held devices, and computers.  We are growing increasingly inconvenienced by paper trails and face to face transactions.

So, if that small minority of voices is correct—those that are convinced that the 666 mark of the devil foretold in the Book of Revelation, further described and appearing on either the forehead or the hand and required to conduct all business is, in fact, a phone or small electronic device (Rev 13:16-17)…  Well, this is why it seemed like a good idea at the time.