In small towns and pre-industrialization, stores had a tracking regime that puts Silicon Valley to shame: the shopkeepers knew you.
They didn't need credit cards or scores because they could identify your store credit account by your face, and your creditworthiness by your family's reputation.
If you were buying something out of the ordinary, you better believe your parents/spouse/church/friends/entire town would hear about it from the shopkeeper, who knew them all as well as he knew you.
A juicy conversation on a party line telephone shared with neighbors, interesting metadata on the postal mail also handled by people who know you and your business, a sighting in public with someone not your spouse, a visitor at an odd time of night, a strange car in your driveway - all these things could quickly become a public affair.
Technology is not bringing us a particularly new invasion, but it is helping at least that side of the "tight-knit communities" of old scale to modern population size and density. I think this is a horrific development, and it's certainly quantitatively unprecedented, but not qualitatively.
They didn't need credit cards or scores because they could identify your store credit account by your face, and your creditworthiness by your family's reputation.
If you were buying something out of the ordinary, you better believe your parents/spouse/church/friends/entire town would hear about it from the shopkeeper, who knew them all as well as he knew you.
A juicy conversation on a party line telephone shared with neighbors, interesting metadata on the postal mail also handled by people who know you and your business, a sighting in public with someone not your spouse, a visitor at an odd time of night, a strange car in your driveway - all these things could quickly become a public affair.
Technology is not bringing us a particularly new invasion, but it is helping at least that side of the "tight-knit communities" of old scale to modern population size and density. I think this is a horrific development, and it's certainly quantitatively unprecedented, but not qualitatively.