Post digital economy seminar: the concept of money.

In our seminar session we looked at money and moreover, the concept of money. Our attention was drawn to a £5 note, on which read "I promise to pay the bearer on demand the sum of five pounds".
 
 This made me think: if paper money is just a promise, how much money is there actually? Is anyone keeping track? Does the amount of cash money equal the same as the amount of money in banks? How can you lose a promise? The mint prints more money every day to make up for the notes which are lost, destroyed or damaged, but how much do they print so that they know the value of the pound wont fall?

Needless to say, the revelation that a physical bank note is only the promise of a monetary value was disturbing. 

We also looked at Bitcoin and watched a documentary on its establishment. The documentary highlighted how one of bitcoins founders was arrested for supplying the currency to someone who went on to sell illegal drugs online, prompting another bitcoin employee to point out: "Bankers give money to people who use it to purchase illegal and explicit commodities every day, it's not like bankers are getting arrested." I think Bitcoin is a really interesting direction for money to be heading in, but I understand that it's very different to the system we have in place now. Big banks would be irrelevant in a Bitcoin world, moreover, the price of any item would be determined by the people. 

The rapidly fluctuating value of bitcoin is concerning, but any system in its early days would have some issues which need sorting through. Yes, the value of one bitcoin can change from day to day, but how is that different to say, a £5 valued at £74.99 because of a combination of numbers and letters on its serial? The worth of the actual £5... is £5. It's not worth £74.99... in fact its not even worth £5 it's just a promise. £74.99 for a promise. Bargain.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Post Digital Body

Image
For our weekly task on the post digital body, I took the reins. I knew I’d be away the following week for a placement assessment and unable to contribute so it seemed fair. I decided to make something of a montage with a voice over so viewers could easily see examples of the concepts we had looked at in class. I really enjoy editing so this task was a delight for me.  I found that this week’s task really made me think about the future of humankind, and what it means to be a person in a physical sense. With the growth of artificial intelligence and advancements with robots like ‘Sophia’, are we blurring the lines between person and machine a little too much? At what point does Sophia get a passport or human rights? If we were able to somehow transpose our consciousness onto a hard drive and live as avatars piloting machine bodies, would we still be human? If we can from man, but end up as something else physically, which aspect of our behind defines who we are? One of my favou...
Read more

Tate Trip: aesthetics and space

Image
 Our look into aesthetics and space in the post digital world, lead us to London for a trip to the Tate Modern. Modigliani, an exhibition on the life and work of Italian painter and sculptor Amadeo Clemente Modigliani, featured numerous works and a virtual reality experience (the main event). First things first, I have never been particularly impressed by virtual reality headsets. More often than not they are clunky and ineffective, making the wearer go cross-eyed and uncomfortable. This, however, was something else entirely. As soon as I put on the virtual reality headset, a huge smile spread across my face (which I quickly had to wipe off through fear of looking quietly ridiculous). The space the headset transported me too was so different to that of the room I was actually in, a small, dimly lit studio with a window looking out at Paris. I noticed something peculiar during my time in the headset; my brain was filling in gaps. I could see and hear what was happening in the ...
Read more