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Recently, I have spent an irrational amount of time trying to calculate the intrinsic value of a thinner wallet and a lighter purse (my wife's purse, that is). This bothersome question arose as I followed the progress of New Jersey's plans to implement the nation's first government-issued smart card. The governor's spirited initiative is entitled Access NJ, and it would establish a precedent-setting program that begins with a digitized driver's license. Initially, a motorist's picture, driving record, signature, and fingerprint would be stored on his or her individual card, and in subsequent stages, insurance, credit, bank records, medical information, and other personal data would be added. All of the specific-use plastic and paper cards we carry and the services they represent would be combined into one convenient—and very smart—personal identification card.

I work for a New Jersey legislator, so I was not unaware of the program that narrowly failed in June when controversy prevented the bill from being posted for a floor vote in either the senate or the assembly. The barrage of voices that rose from an unusual coalition of religious conservatives, free thinkers, and civil libertarians caused enough hesitancy in the legislature to put the program on hold.

Commercial smart cards are becoming more prevalent here and abroad, but they have been issued by private industry, predominantly banks or short-term authorities (like the one used by patrons at the Atlanta Olympics). To date, no state in the Union has produced a smart card.

When the smart-card headlines succumbed to fresher topics, I was left alone with my query concerning my wallet. I was trying to figure out exactly when our walk through the technology bazaar became a forced march. And I wondered how many questions we consider appropriate to raise before we make peace with the latest marvels.

Technology stop or yield signs are hard to define and defend, and we have yet to set the limits that would at least frame a thorough debate on things like smart cards. Invasion of privacy is certainly a valid argument, but it needs some persuasive allies in order to insert a persuasive wedge. A good starting point is the incongruity of a government producing a smart card.

The commercial interest in smart cards is clear enough; it has been reported that they reduce per-transaction costs from a quarter to a penny. Government enthusiasm is more difficult to understand. Indeed, the leaner, meaner efficiency such cards so proudly offer is noticeably incompatible with the bureaucracy that proposes to issue them.

We Americans are a diverse and cluttered people. The venerated wisdom arising from the colonies was decidedly in favor of inefficiency, even the sloppy, wasteful kind that prefers motion without effect to hasty accomplishments. The bicameral legislature and separation of powers conceptualized and created by this nation's founders were not intended to be compact and always practical, and they are anything but efficient.

Obviously, they were designed to fracture governmental potency into less threatening pieces dependent on the intangibles of cooperation, and waiting. Our forefathers knew that budgets would be delayed, projects suspended, and energy wasted, and they understood the virtue of mandating such unbecoming safeguards.

The smart-card mentality doesn't like such hindrances. It would argue for a single branch of government, a streamlined command unencumbered by prudence, protest, or delay. Separation of powers makes us clumsy; why not instead one orderly whole? Perhaps a single building could handle all of the affairs of government; though that may seem alarming, it really is not, and the savings are too great to ignore. We will be fine. Such consolidations are expressly prohibited by the Constitution, but a tidy restructuring is sure to simplify our lives, and we can rest assured that our technological prowess will provide a continuation of the independence we all expect. OK?

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