A friend of mine forwarded a very interesting video to me the other day. The presentation deals with the demise of physical currency due to it’s irrelevant nature in an Internet enabled global society. I have always been a bit of a Luddite when it comes to the prevalence of cash as the favoured payment medium for most common “everyday” transactions. It is simple, inexpensive and anonymous. For these reasons and others I have always maintained that cash will remain king at least through my lifetime. However, the presenter of this speech Mr. Douglas Rushkoff makes some very interesting observations about the origins of cash, whom it benefits in society and lastly why it’s demise may come more quickly than some of us think.
The demise of cash not a new topic to me, however the seriousness of the paradigm shift being proposed is. I can readily understand the necessity for services such as PayPal, Linden Dollars and SmartyPig (well maybe not Linden dollars as a serious replacement, but that is another topic for debate), which are not necessarily based on a physical medium but that can still be commuted into one. What Mr. Ruskoff is postulating is the complete breakdown of money as a physical medium because it no longer benefits society, but ultimately attempts to control it. If his hypothesis is accurate and this revolution comes to be, we could all stand to get very wealthy by being on the leading edge of the conversion. And if that is the case, who better to take advantage of the evolution than those of us who are most familiar with the old style of money?
Take some time when you can and watch the following video – then let us know your thoughts…
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This is definitely “out of the box” thinking. I am not sure the history he is citing is correct. Definitely going to do some research. His concept is more than the end of cash, but rather the end of currency as we know it. Maybe he is just fishing for someone to find “value” in his “ideas”. I did not find enough value in it to give him any grain…
I wouldn’t mind a dollar (even a physical one) for every time I’ve heard that cash is obsolete/dead/dying. Over recent years these arguments have become more frequent especially from those whose life is ‘webcentric’.
It’s easy to make the argument if you live in New York or Los Angeles (or indeed in the so called developed world for that matter), but of course there’s a huge world out there that are not yet connected to the web. For example, one billion people, or one seventh of the world’s population, live in Africa and of those only 5% have web access. What would the other 950 million do for money?
Incidentally, on a recent visit to NYC I offered a cab drive a piece of plastic to pay for the fare from JFK and I’m still trying to remember all the new words I learnt…
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