Word: smarted
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...plastic credit cards that millions of people use every day have at least one feature in common: in technological terms, they are all dumb. Soon, however, many people will be carrying "smart" cards equipped with tiny electronic brains similar to those now found in everything from cars to computers. French scientists have developed a card containing a microchip that can store at least 100 times as much data as the magnetic strips on standard charge plates...
...cards can hold information ranging from the amount of credit a consumer has left to any medicines to which he might be allergic. By using special machines that read the smart cards, sales clerks can approve credit purchases instantly, without having to phone a central headquarters for authorization. In addition, the cards are almost impossible to counterfeit...
French banks and credit-card issuers plan to switch completely to smart cards by 1988. In the U.S., MasterCard will launch the first smart-card experiment this fall by giving out about 100,000 of them in Columbia, Md., and Palm Beach, Fla. If that pilot program goes well, MasterCard may begin national distribution as early...
Even with the steep overhead, smart buildings have no trouble attracting tenants. To stay competitive, owners of older, dumber structures are retrofitting them, bringing in computers and sensors and tearing out walls and ceilings to install the wiring necessary to raise their building intelligence quotients. The Park Avenue Atrium in New York City, for example, was stripped down to its structural steel during remedial reworking...
Some think the fuss is not worth the price. Rather than reducing costs, warns Robert Jones, an Atlanta regional manager with the real estate firm of Cushman and Wakefield, smart technology actually increases them; for one thing, more sophisticated workers are required to maintain the buildings. "We're no longer talking about boilers and fuse boxes," says Jones. "Maintenance crews today have to know what 'optimum start times' and 'digital control devices' mean." Others criticize the lack of choice implicit in a smart building, which gets its technology from only a few suppliers...