Will we need cash in the future?

In My View columnist Emma Young. Picture: Courtesy of Emma Young (Image: Emma Young)

When a good majority of our lives are literally run from our mobile phones, how long will it be until we succumb to a virtual and digital lifestyle?

Every week we can see new ways to cut out physical presence, be it controlling our heating from anywhere - like the changing rooms at the gym - or buying a train ticket from the comfort of your own home while cooking the kids' tea and watching television.

Years ago (well scarily enough not that many years ago), we went to a train station to buy a ticket and to the shops to buy clothes and groceries.

We relied on a phone book to find a telephone number. We went to the library to do research. We read actual books and had timetables for cinema listings, train and bus times.

But now Silicon Valley talks of a future in a 'frictionless' world which translates into a global society where notes and coins become obsolete.

But scientists and psychologists believe that the mere act of handing over money for our purchases is essential and shows us as the consumer, with a visible exchange with our hard-earned cash giving us a sense of worth on what we are spending.

It is clinically proven that when we hand over a £10 note, for example, we are reminded how we came by it and the work entailed to have that note in our wallets and how it is far more real than a few clicks on a key pad, where we can ignore any guilt or conscious on spending but chiefly be ignorant to the value of cash.

Is it healthy for children to be growing up with no hard cash and paying for everything with a credit card? Does it send them the right messages? Does it allow them to appreciate the value of money, or will it send future generations into a spiral of debt which they will not - or rather cannot - take any psychological responsibility for?

The more technically minded highlight the negatives of cash, involving cost to government and businesses with ATM fees, theft and lost tax revenue.

Notes and coins can carry germs and spread diseases, again placing stress on medical services and missed employment through illness. But how far are we all prepared to go?

And if we go cashless, how easy would it be to reverse the process if it were not to succeed?

We are already using 'frictionless sharing' on social media sites and I don't think any of us could go back to a life without texting, messaging and email, which have become an obligatory part of our day.

We continuously check our phones to be kept updated on friends, family and colleagues. We can find out what the weather is doing all over the world if we so wish.

Cheque books gather dust in a desk drawer around the house, rarely used and seldom thought of.

My father, at 81, responded to an offer in one of the national papers recently by sending a cheque for payment for a CD he desired. Their response was simple: 'We don't do cheques.'

My father's response was just as simple and completely automatic with likeminded others of his generation: 'What about postal orders?' Let's just say he never got the CD!

What happens when an electricity surge results in power loss and the digital world crashes so dramatically that files are wiped out from bank accounts and card machines struggle to keep up? Will we dust down our cheque books and reach for our purses because there are just some things in life that just can't change?