THE FUTURE OF MONEY Bernard A. Lietaer - library.uniteddiversity ...

Privacy erosion may creep on us like the experiment with frogs that
let themselves boil to death if the temperature rises very slowly. And
it may all happen, thanks to giant corporations most of us have never
heard of, that appear suddenly out of nowhere, like whales surfacing
from the deep. This is not theory or paranoia: it can be illustrated by
the actual history of the biggest Net distribution corporation of 1997-
98.
The case of the stealth mega-store
Quiz question: Name the largest Net merchandiser in 1997 (81.5
billion in sales). A corporation that makes available over one million
different products and services on-line (as a basis of comparison, a
typical super market has 50,000 items), and that has detailed
psychographic and transaction data concerning over 100 million
consumers (about half of US households). An extra hint: the same
corporation is also the world's largest franchiser in both hotel chains
and in residential real estate.
Did you guess Cendant?
If you didn't, don't feel badly. Most of its customers don't know its
name either. Cendant is the result of a merger between two just as
little-known companies Comp-U-Card (CUC) and Hospitality
Franchise Systems (HFS) which have nothing in common, except an
understanding of the power of information in the Information Age.
Their history is a perfect case study of how the dynamics of the
Information Age can concentrate power in totally new ways.
Walter Forbes started CUC in 1976 as a computer-based shopping
service. His core idea was rock-solid and simple. Instead of having
manufacturers ship to wholesalers and retailers who sell to the
consumer, they supply the CUC database with information about