Are you referring to the Motif programming manual(there are few motif programming books so I am assuming you are). If so that was a mutli volume effort with books devoted to particular subjects(ie the API would be one of them).
Do you really think that if a billion people wanted to migrate in a few months we would have anyway of stopping them? They would have to be motivated by something pretty terrible and yet allow them mobility at the same time. Like say a war. Which we see all the time.
I used to write fire control and fire monitoring software. The whole idea of live testing is built into the ethos of such systems. In fire alarms and control the only tests that matter are the ones performed in a production environment.
Also keep in mind that this is clearly American banking which is often quite behind the rest of the world(this is due to the fragmented nature of the banking industry in the US compared to other countries). I mean checking account? I have never had one of those. Paper statements? I haven't seen one of those in I dont know how long... 10 years?
TI99? You pussy. I'm 40 and when I was 10 used to help my Dad build homebrew z80 machines. My first programming was writing a small OS in z80 asm. Helped him build an awesome z280(that was a rare chip) transputer.
I'm in London and they are rolling out contactless applications for certain things now. Subway sandwiches all take them. London buses you can pay by swipign your debit card and there is one bank that has a debit card/oyster card(oyster card is use on all London transport).