barrytrot wrote:You think they want sales to be online? I would think just the opposite as the government does NOT like the anonymous nature the Internet allows (and likely will still allow to some degree within 10 years).
Anonymous ? I'm sorry but nothing you do online is anonymous, i may look like it is but you are more tracked here than in Vegas. There is nothing worst than the internet, period.
Everything you do here is tracked width data to uniquely identify you on multiple level (DNS, ISP, this forum, google, Internet Archive, ...) and recorded for years if not forever. There is log of everything you has done on the internet and by combining them and even removing personal data them you can still track all you do back to the person.
See "AOL release search results" to see how it can come to bite your ass even when the data have been cleaned to remove personal info. There are dozen of others example even for people who never turn a computer on in their life, since everything is stored in a computer connected to the internet these day.
I have to agree with whatsnext, i do not know how much time it will take, but i believe internet will dominate our life and the economy and will be controlled by government because it's so much easier to control/track it here than in real life. The power that be will use every dirty trick they can to purse control over everyone and everything under the sun and it's so much easier with a computer.
Where i live (Canada), employment insurance is only possible by internet now, you can't get it otherwise. If you don't have a computer or internet you can use their to make your demand. They have try several anti-constitutional dirty trick to force people to link their bank account (and to open one for those who don't already have one) with their annual taxes report (transmit on internet) and back off at the last possible second to prevent it from getting to supreme court, unfortunately most people got caught into it before that happen. And it's just the begging.