Week Five | Post Digital Economy.
The reconfiguration of the
monetary system away from cash and towards electronic media is technologically
as well as culturally and economically determined. The first set of causes that
support the phasing-out of cash are related to the overall efficiency of the
payment system: technological developments expand the horizon of what is
possible increasing the scope, the speed and the safety of monetary transactions
and at the same time as they are reducing the costs. The second set of causes
are socially and culturally determined; the expansion of a culture of “real
virtuality”. (Castells 2010, 358)
Whilst living in modern society we have noticed that
the post-modern world has now quickened it step. We gradually eased ourselves
into a life without physical money. As we know it we live our lives through the
debit transactions and contactless payments. When we see someone pay with physical
money its quite strange. With the introduction of online shopping it was only a
matter of time before we made this leap and applying into everyday lives. This was
evident when every part of the capitalist market made a move to monopolise their
profits through online markets. You can now buy clothes, food and appliances
online if you have a credit or debit card on hand. Online backing has helped us
keep track of what we spend only rarely now do you see a shop saying cash only
eventually you’ll see debit and credit cards be the only device we use when
doing our weekly shop.
The innovation of peer-to-peer
payment systems like bitcoin should be studied both as an act of criticism
again the established architecture of cryptocurrencies and as a genuine attempt
to provide a viable system for transferring economic value and facilitating transactions
across the web. Innovations that come from the network communities of
programmers, hackers and artists, bitcoin and the block chain “have served to
accelerate capitalism, [while] they have also served to strengthen antagonism
against it, by generating critical artistic practices and hacktivist
interventions based on technologies and methodologies of sharing and
networking.” (Bazzichelli 2013, 9)
Something that we need to realise is that bitcoin
is not the first cryptocurrency to exist nor will it be the last. However, cryptocurrencies
is removing the dependencies we face when looking at how much the government controls
our money. In lecture, something caught my attention. The tagline on a 5-pound
note. "I promise to pay the bearer on demand the sum
of five pounds". Which
to me means that we are actually paying for an item but acknowledging an accumulating
debt. This forced me and my friend to look closely at our spending habits. We viewed
personal receipts with one saying that this will be debted to our debit account. Which
solidifies my previous thinking. However, when looking at this innovation you
can’t help but come across new ones. For example, Amazon Go can redefine the
boundaries of money itself. This is a new innovation that logs the items in
your baskets no need for checkouts because as soon as you walk out it takes the
balance from your account. Perhaps this is how the entire world will be in 20
years.
Money was never real. This just confirms it.
Amazon Go:
Alex Clark
Take on Bitcoin:
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