the credit reporting industry was pretty much the first one to become computerized.
I worked for a credit bureau in a city in the southwest in 1966-67. At the time everything was manual. By that I mean that all of our files were paper files, in large file cabinets, alphabetical by name. The reports we generated and used were based on the actual physical reports we got from various agencies. We'd call up local businesses and ask them for the information we needed. And, at the time, we were being told that soon everything would be on computers. Cool.
I left that job, and shortly after went to work in the airline industry, which was in the process of computerizing the reservations systems. I actually went to work for the second US carrier to computerize, in 1969. So I have a first hand acquaintance with the joys of computerization.
Oh, and I want to be the first to tell you that it is a REALLY bad idea to name your first born Your Name Junior. Because I saw, over and over, that around the time Junior was 20 or so, he'd be trying to establish his independent life and his own credit. But usually he still lived at home. So he and the same address as Senior. Let me tell you, it was incredibly common that one or the other was not a very good citizen about paying his bills. And, because they had the same name, and all to often at least one of them was not very consistent about the use of junior or senior, it was a bit tricky to tell who was who. Which meant that their credit files became hopelessly intertwined. Really. Hopelessly intertwined.
If I were dictator of North America, I would absolutely not allow someone to give his child the same name, even with junior or worse yet, numerals like III or IV or whatever, after the name. New babies really do deserve their own names. Individuals deserve their own records, and credit scores, and whatever.
I left that job a couple of years before the computerization. But I suspect that moving everything to computers in the long run made things worse. At least when we were dealing with the paper records, we could try to figure out who was who, whether it was a Junior and Senior situation, or something else. I can recall actually teasing apart a credit file that we'd realized contained the credit records of two different people. Having the actual paper files made it possible. I bet today that's not easily done. And I'm talking a straightforward confusion of the two files, so-and-so senior and so-and-so junior. It must be even more difficult if you have a relatively common name. By which I mean a name that more than two or three others share. I happen to have a unique name, by which I mean when I google my name, no one else shows up. Just me. Which is sort of cool. I'm not sure if it makes me less liable to identity theft. But I do know that the advent of computers has made it a lot harder to keep track of all the different people who happen to share the same name.
I currently work at the information desk of a hospital in the southwest. People call in to me to find their friend or relative who is a patient. You would not believe how often there is more than one person with that same first and last name here at the hospital. If they are more than two or so years apart in age it's not a problem. And then there are the times when someone knows his relative only by a nickname, and honestly has no clue as to the person's legal first name. Which is how they'll be registered. I have no problems with nicknames-- Cynthia, Cindy; Joseph, Joe, Joey; Stephen, Steve; Albert, Bertie. Those kinds of things I can figure out quite easily. But if the person you know as Uncle Grappa is here as Martin something or another, and the surname is a really common surname, I can't find him
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