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Technology

The first obvious thing is that the flow of money and information is: 1) global; and 2) near instantaneous. Those flows have been speeding up for a long time but have now reached the limit of instantaneous. You just can't get any faster than that.

 

Money has ceased to be a tangible thing. It is just more information to be transferred. Seldom does tangible money change hands any more – just information about who it would belong to if it existed. So, even when we talk about the transfer of money, we are just talking about the transfer of information. We can talk about information and consider money a subset.

 

The people, institutions and businesses that control information and the flow of it hold tremendous power that trumps military might and wealth. That shifts the power centers of the world from those who have, to those who know. They may be one and the same, but that is far from a forgone conclusion at this point.

 

From "Money is Intangible in the Information Age",  Sense & Nonsense, November 21, 2010

Bitcoin and all currencies, including the US dollar, are just digital entries in a digital ledger. So, what is the difference? The difference is that Bitcoin does its own accounting automatically and instantly without any human input other than the transaction itself.

Microsoft recently quit supporting Windows XP and older Office suites. Most businesses and individuals will simply junk the old computer and buy a new one with Windows 7 or 8 pre-installed and use whatever word processing, mail handling and internet applications that come with it. Then they will spend many hours trying to figure out how it works and how to use it.  All in all, it will probably cost about a week's work and five hundred to a thousand dollars to make the transition. About the time they are comfortable with the "new" way, it will be time to upgrade again. It is an endless cycle.

Step Back and Think about this for a few minutes. Computers and technology are really no different from other areas of our lives. We must either take responsibility for doing things for ourselves or pay someone else to do them for us or do without.

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