From: Charles D Hixson (charleshixsn@earthlink.net)
Date: Sun Jan 07 2007 - 16:56:18 MST
Philip Goetz wrote:
> In a recent post, I talked about using energy as currency in the future.
>
> Which of these do you think would make the best currency at, say, SL4
> (wrt present day):
>
> ...
> 8. Goulash currency. A combination of all of the above, in which you
> might set your preferences about which currencies to be buying and
> selling in every exchange, and software agents working on behalf of
> the buyer and seller would work out what was actually exchanged in
> every transaction. I'd lay my bets on this one.
>
This makes the most sense. It's the currency that I'd use if I could,
and had the attention to spare for the requisite valuations.
N.B.: This currency will inherently cause different entities to value
different things differently. Well, of course that just makes it more
reflective of reality...
A caution here: I'm seeing this in the context where each entity is not
seeing itself in isolation, but rather as a part of the larger entity.
Sort of like being a part of a culture now, only more so. This will
mean that the value of different currency factors alters depending on
who one is dealing with, what their reputation is, etc. The current
primitive mirror of this is boycotts organized against companies
perceived to be socially detrimental.
(Always expect the roots of the future to be expressed in the present,
though often quite hard to recognize. The surprise factor of emergent
features is not that they couldn't have been foreseen, but that either
nobody did, or nobody took the prophet seriously.)
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Wed Jul 17 2013 - 04:00:57 MDT