This is the Modem World: The internet may be killing cash

Each week Joshua Fruhlinger contributes This is the Modem World, a column dedicated to exploring the culture of consumer technology.

We worship money. It can be exchanged for life-sustaining stuff, makes us powerful and drives us to make new things. It also drives us to do some very strange stuff, but that's a subject for another day and place. You may not bow to the altar of the dollar, but you certainly recognize the need to have some in order to survive.

While we adore money as a society, its time may be limited as a currency, and the internet may be to blame. Money wasn't always king. Before we traded cash, we exchanged gold, cows, clamshells, rice, copper, tea leaves and even bat guano. At some point in those currencies' lives, people determined that there were other things worth more and moved on to trade those.

Filed under: Internet

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