There was a time when I could walk into a grocery store, see that something was on sale, put it in my cart, and pay the sale price.

Apparently, that was too simple.

Now when I walk into Kroger and see a product advertised at a lower price, I first need to “clip” a digital coupon. That means pulling out my phone, opening an app, signing into an account and digitally clipping something that does not physically exist so that a computer will permit me to pay the advertised price. Kroger currently promotes entire categories of “Weekly Digital Deals” built around precisely this process.

Why does buying cheese need a user account?

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Six years ago I wrote a blog post called Gaslighting Liberty. In that post I separated my concerns about privacy and government power into two categories: the “now” and the “not yet.”

The “now” was easy. We were already willingly carrying tracking devices in our pockets. We were allowing Google to know where we went, Amazon to know what we bought, Facebook to know who we knew, and Alexa to sit in our kitchens listening for us to ask what the weather was going to be tomorrow. We traded privacy for convenience.

Willingly.

The “not yet” concerned me much more. The technology existed, or was beginning to exist, but the pieces had not yet been completely connected. My concern wasn’t necessarily what the government was doing with all of that information at that exact moment. My concern was what someone could eventually do with it once the infrastructure existed.

Six years later I think I need to revisit that distinction.

Because a lot of the “not yet” is becoming the “now.”

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