Money, trust, and inclusion
Scott D. Mainwaring, Ph.D. Affiliate faculty Dept. of Human Centered Design & Engineering (HCDE) College of Engineering, University of Washington
[email protected] The social life of money
From kevinmd.com/blog/2014/12/dear-hmo-dont-want- money.html
A clay tablet with cuneiform inscription from Anatolia circa 1875-1840 B.C. Money started with receipts and ledgers, not barter. archaeologynewsnetwork.blogspot.com/2017/11/cuneiform- tablets-provide-clues-on.html
Let’s make our own money
One Fundred Dollars. Hand drawn by the artist J.S.G. Boggs (1955-2017). See Boggs: A Comedy of Values by Lawrence Weschler.
One and one-half hour RiverHOURS notes (front and back), complementary currency produced by the Gorge Local Currency Cooperative (GLCC). riverhoursalternate.weebly. com Digital money
First plastic magstipe credit card, 1969
Edy Felica cash card, launched 2001 Safaricom M-PESA mobile money system, launched in Kenya 2007 Meiwaku and tokushita!
Tokyo Metro at rush hour. Photo by Tim Adams (Wikimedia).
Comment on Yelp, 7/4/15: “To this genius holding up the line while playing on his phone, I hope okinawa.stripes.com/news/jackpot-pachinko-can-get-you- your sub gives you explosive diarrhea. hooked-japan Money games
A wang ba (网吧 - internet café) in China. Photo from https://technode.com/2014/09/30/a-new-age-for-chinese- internet-cafes/ More Monopoly money ($30 “billion”) is printed each year than real money. Photo: Jibril Sulaiman, USA Today QQ, Tencent’s penguin mascot, with Q Coins Blockchain dreams
Radical dreams • Futurity – “if we don’t dream the future now, someone else will” • Decentralization and disintermediation • “the logical conclusion of the Internet” • Doing away with trust in “middle men” (governments, payment networks, …) • The autonomous and the automated • Doing away with humans • Trust in “incorruptible” algorithms
Lana Swartz The incorporative blockchain Asst. Prof. of Media Studies, • More boring, realizable dreams of the University of Virginia banking and technology industries Website: llaannaa.com • Efficiency; compliance (KYC/AML)
Lana Swartz. 2017. Blockchain dreams: Imagining techno-economic alternatives after Bitcoin. In Manual Castells (ed.), Another Economy is Possible: Culture and Economy in a Time of Crisis. Wiley.
The Civil experiment
Jen Poyant and Manoush Zomorodi “ZigZag is a podcast about changing the course of capitalism, journalism, theverge.com/2018/10/17/17991296/civil- and women’s lives. For real.” failed-token-sale-blockchain-media-ethereum Stable Genius Productions - one of the One of the first consumer-facing ICOs “newsrooms” running on CIVIL Needed to raise $8m; raised $1.4m zigzagpod.com and civil.co ($375,000 from 3000 consumers) The grey zone Financial inclusion
• An unrealized (and unprofitable?) dream • Big usability issues – access isn’t enough • Real needs, though • The unbanked and under-banked in Oregon • Funding for small businesses • Lower card fees for merchants
Can the blockchain help? If it can, it won’t be without intermediaries
bankonoregon.org More
10/12/18 Episode: Full Faith & Credit Featuring Neha Nerula (MIT) and Bill Maurer (UC Irvine)
A nonprofit organization committed to creating equal, open and inclusive opportunities in the blockchain industry.
diversityinblockchain.com