The first statement you quoted refers to the data you constantly generate, its accessibility being predicated on the level of technology available to humans. The second one refers to the PII - stuff like name, address, SSN, credit card number, etc. - all of which you constantly give away to random parties.
I really don't give out that info on a regular basis. Unlike the first example you can for example pay in cash, which is not necessarily anonymous, but generally acts that way. Store loyalty cards are another example of something used to track people you really don't need to use.
Now, I do carry a cellphone around so that exists. But, the vast majority of organisations have no access to that information.
If you buy online, you give most of thay information. Maybe US is different, but in Poland getting any kind of service from a bank (e.g. credit) or telco (e.g. new phone contract) involves filling in paperwork that asks for your official ID number and (equivalent of) SSN, etc. I don't believe a random branch of a random company in a random city is secure and trustworthy enough to not have PII leak out. Hell, even libraries have that stuff - at least one used my SSN as a default password in the past. And in fact, in Poland we had cases of PII being available to people who shouldn't have access to them due to bugs in official systems.
