Discreet means on the down low, under the radar, careful, but discrete means individual or detached. They come from the same ultimate source, the Latin discrētus, for separated or distinct, but discreet has taken its own advice and quietly gone its separate way.
Today discreet is to be politely private about something and to be aware of consequences if everyone finds out what you're doing. Be discreet when you eat the lollipop your mom gave you but not your sister, so you don't have to listen to a tantrum. Wealthy people often try to be discreet with their money, because they don't want everyone to know they're rich. When you're trying to be cool, and keep something quiet, you're being discreet:

A source said: "Wayne attracts a lot of attention and the millionaires attracted to the area like to be more discreet." (The Sun)
Sound Level: Quiet, with widely spaced tables allowing for discreet conversations. (Business Week)
Discrete remains closer to its roots, meaning individual, detached, separated:

It is far better to think of these as isolated, unpredictable, discrete events. (Salon)
Quantum theory is usually thought of as discrete; after all, that's what the word "quantum" connotes. (Scientific American)
So last year, when earthquakes were recorded in small, discrete clusters in north central Arkansas, researchers perked up. (New York Times)
Although discreet and discrete have separate (or discrete) meanings, they are often confused. Remember that the "ee's" in discreet hide together in the middle of the word, but the "t" in discrete separates them.

The  last sentence has an elegant beauty in the turn of a phrase to illustrate.  The phrase?  "ee".  But e=e! A thing that is itself is not a phrase.  Not until it is separated by something to make them two things.  In this case a "t".  The technical definition says a phrase can be a single word but a word is representational expression meaning of the relationship in context of two things.  One of them is understood even if one of them is the word "cow" and the other is the mental picture of a cow in my head that is not big enough to hold a cow but how much space does the representation of it take up that is not a cow in my head?

Elegant.

On with the train of thought that went off the tracks somewhere previously.

Get the picture?

The World Wide Web (WWW) is the conceptual picture in our heads.  The shadow on our monitor wall cast by reality without any inherent noise in the Internet system itself.  Its output interface on the screen or old school paper print is exact.  Noise, if any is introduced by filters between  the screen representations and our cognition of what is on the screen.

There is a conceptual breakthrough here for me.....perhaps.  My perceptions of the Internet and WWW are based on the model of the relationship between Hardware and Software.

Hardware has its Operating System and Applications in the physical Domain of nature.  Dictated by the constraints of nature, rules of the natural universe that express themselves in applications of those rules.

The object purpose of physical universe Hardware is conceptual universe software with hardware programming using software language built on the same logic as the hardware.  Binary at the machine level, binary at the software level.

Money is a legacy universal networked conceptual system.  Universal language logic before computers.  Maybe at the root of computing?  Base on the concept of two things being equal?  Yes, that basic perhaps and that is a basic mathematical relationship the under laying concept being that the state of presence of a discrete thing and its absence of presence are two different things.

The historic based Monetary System we have today was premised on the lowest granular unit of its time for system creation and operation is.........(this deserves a line break plus bold to give it an independent high order importance at this point).............is.....

Account!!!!   Four "!"s being highest order.   Account being the holder of a presence or absence number value.  Zero (absence of money) or not Zero (presence of money).  Its the binary of its time and created by a concept called Debt where there is a division of a single conceptual thing (money=money) made possible by the insertion of an element between them to make them two things.  One a debit and the other a credit with two different owners of their respective value. 

I know.  It takes a leap to see it. 

Along comes the Information Age preceded by going so far lower in the order of granularity of the physical property nature of things gave us grand physical electro/mechanical modern objects that enabled us to apply the same granular level approach on a more abstract conceptual level and launch us into the Information Age and its grand Conceptual modern objects.  The foremost grand Conceptual Objects are those that were not previously possible to create.  They were also easier to create totally new to become something we never had before or replace something we had with some thing more efficient.  So efficient that legacy systems either died by going out of physical existence or were restructured into more purely conceptual existence.  Buggy whips and horse and buggies.  POTs.

We can logically go down to a lower granular level of Money as a Conceptual Object lower than Account but reaching a greater level of efficiency in this universal system is up against a well entrenched and powerful legacy system based on Account as an owning object of Money.  A legacy system that has been digitized to make its own now dysfunctional legacy foundation even more entrenched in the Information Age.

There are two ways to restructure.  Knock out the foundational underpinnings of a thing and it falls down and is no more.  Self induced it is suicide.  Outwardly induced it is revolution.  Evolution in world of Nature is from the bottom up changes in the lowest granular level structure of  things in a bottom up driven process of change.  In the Conceptual world, given that a Concept is proven good by its benefit to us, evolution is to get better by refining it toward.......line break for added emphasis again.........

A Better Union!!!!

"The best way to predict your future is to create it" -- Abraham Lincoln

Union at that time had a different meaning.  I think a Better Union today means a better conceptual network of things and concepts to serve us.  We have better tools to do that.  Better tools to apply to legacy conceptual structures to eliminate dysfunction, enhance their efficiency and quality.  There are many riffs on what Lincoln said.   or maybe he was just covering a tune.