Biometrics are now on-track to replace IDs altogether, with everyone from the officials at Narita Airport, the cops at Central Booking and the proprietors of Disneyworld taking fingerprint samples.

Of the current offerings in biometrics--retina scans, finger- and hand-print identifications, face scans--our vote is for Hitachi's contact-less "finger vein" scanning technology, which has been on sale in Japan since 2006 and is now available in Asia, Europe and North America. A fast and low-hassle finger scan can be linked to your financial information or used like housekeys, and as of October in can be used to start your car.

The thought that we could replace all of this

with this

is alluring indeed. So will it ever happen? Perhaps--just today, India's Punjab National Bank rolled out its first biometric ATM in the village of Gautam Budh Nagar, so that even illiterate customers can withdraw and deposit money. No ATM cards, no signatures, no typing; the machines work by voice prompts, audio recordings, and your finger. PNB plans to have the machines in over 30,000 villages by 2010.