

IEEE Spectrum special report on the Future of Money - dbcooper
http://spectrum.ieee.org/static/future-of-money

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olefoo
The thing is that most of the articles in this edition deserve their moment in
the focus of Hacker News. Money is the ultimate software, it is a protocol
agreement that drives human behavior in the real world. Money may be the
illusion of value, or merely an allusion to value; but it is also the dominant
abstraction of the age of abstractions. You need money to live as a member of
society, and to be effective within society you need more than some minimal
threshold amount of money. And while we don't wear our bank accounts on our
sleeves (or social media profiles) we do have a finely honed sense for who has
money in quantity and who does not and it is one of the primary determinants
of social status in our society.

Money is a topic worthy of investigations, and of criticism and critique. It
is also a fertile ground for entrepreneurial improvement.

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iwwr
"Kublai Khan was ahead of his time: He recognized that what matters about
money is not what it looks like, or even what it’s backed by, but whether
people believe in it enough to use it."

That belief is based on some form of backing eventually. It could be a hard
and liquid commodity or a government demanding taxes in that particular
currency.

The full article here [http://spectrum.ieee.org/at-work/innovation/a-brief-
history-...](http://spectrum.ieee.org/at-work/innovation/a-brief-history-of-
money)

Note that money has little to do with abstraction, but rather confidence.
People hark back to the 'good old days' of hard money not because they're
incapable of abstraction, but because they distrust a political authority to
preserve that confidence.

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DiabloD3
Hurrah, Bitcoin! Thank you, IEEE.

~~~
dclinton
Did you read their article on bitcoin? In the first paragraph they pretty much
claim that it was invented to let people buy porn anonymously over the
internet. That article is not going to do bitcoin any favours at all. And as
for their handy "infographic" on what happens when a transaction takes
place...

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nextstep
I get a 404 error :(

