But then another, broader consideration occurs to us: Handling the public’s financial matters by branch banking methods may be completely wrong. Modern technology may of developing financial servicing methods far cheaper for both bank and customer. After all, handling cash and checks is an extremly awkward way for a person to acquire goods at a price. With adequately designed information centers, the retail markets need only input information about a customer purchase, and the customer’s employers need only inputinformation about his income. Thus every purchase would become simply a matter of centralized information processing as woulod a man’s weekly or monthly paycheck. There would therefore be no real need for any of us to carry money about and no need to go to a bank and stand patintly in line. But this idea of automated purchasing and income recording is followed by another thought. We realize that any such automated finacial sysytem would probably end in eliminating a number of clearical and managerial jobs. Consequently we must examine the social problems of displaced personnel and the need for retraining, otherwise total social costs of automated banking might be far greater than the convenience gained by introducing new technology.
Before we can decide whweter the manager of the branch bank is performing “satisfactorily”, we must decide a much broader issue-wheter the particular system that the manger operates is an appropriate one. This question leads to deeper consideration concerning the potential of modern technology and their inplications with respect to automation, job training, and the future economics of many lives.