http://ideasproject.com/feature.webui?id=3523
"In the 20th century, money became a commodity; now technology may be making it superfluous
"We're entering a time in which products are expected to give themselves over as platforms for innovation and reinvention. Even money, something we tend to think of as absolute, seems to have lost some standing as a singular fixed medium with which to conduct transactions. This deterioration may have begun with the excesses of the past thirty years, when money came into its own as a commodity. Derivatives, options, credit default swaps, margin calls, shorts were inventive new ways to repackage money, some of which resulted in the near-collapse of our financial system.
(((Money? Can't get any of it! Might as well declare it obsolete!)))
"The recent challenges to our banking system notwithstanding, a different kind of transformation, on with implications to the very essence of our money system, is being affected by technology.
"Never, in human history, have we seen a country-sized economy where the underlying driving force was not monetary, but instead, non-monetary forces, reputation, attention, et cetera." -Chris Anderson, Wired (((I'd be guessing that Chris has witnessed incredible amounts of non-paid housework performed over the years, mostly for motives of love and care, but it's true enough to say that this is an "economy" which no economist in history ever "sees")))
"From its role in institutions to its use for transactions, in places as far flung as Uganda and Bangladesh, money is giving way to other forms of currency or, in some cases, nothing at all... (((Actually, in Uganda and Bangladesh there's a great deal of activity that a money economy never reached in the first place. It never paid banks to go there, and that's why the unbanked used phones. )))
(((Of course, once rich-country technically-capable people find themselves unbanked, it gets all exciting.)))
(((Ever heard the expression, "Poor folks love their cellphones"? You might wanna mull that one over for a while, as it's proved capable of multiple interpretations.)))
"One of the big drivers of this change is a phenomenon discussed by Harvard Professor of Entrepreneurial Legal Studies, Yochai Benkler, called "social production." Benkler explains in his book, "The Wealth of Networks,""... (((I find myself looking forward to Benkler's sequel, which probably ought to be titled, "The Sudden, Shattering Poverty Of All Previous Forms of Organization.")))
(((This stuff is the awesome. I probably should be demanding that you pay me for this, because I am going broke circulating this. On the other hand, I didn't pay the guy I linked to, and his demand for some cash for all this work would have simply made me chuckle indulgently.)))
