Smart credit cards coming

From USATODAY.com

"The United States is the only developed country still hanging on to credit and debit cards with those black magnetic stripes, the kind you swipe through retail terminals. The rest of the industrialized world has switched —or is in the process of switching— to "smart" chip-based cards.

"The problem with that black magnetic stripe on the back of your credit card is that it's about as secure as writing your account information on a postcard: everything is in the clear and can be copied. Card fraud, and the measures taken to prevent it, costs U.S. merchants, banks and consumers billions each year.

The smart cards can't be copied, which greatly reduces the potential for fraud. Smart cards with built-in chips are the equivalent of a safe: they can hide information so it can only be unlocked with the right key. Because the important information is hidden, the cards can't be replicated."

 This seems to be an example where being technologically advanced stands in the way of technological advancement. Countries that adopt technologies early go on to build infrastructure to support that technology. Then when new technologies come along, there is an inertia to stick with the existing technology. Something similar has happened in many developing countries -- land line telephones have been completely bypassed, with a majority of the population going from no phone to a cell phone in a relatively short time.