If you think about it, money is a ridiculous concept. Without going into a William Jennings Bryan gold standard history lesson, let’s just say the idea that I can hold this thing, this little cloth rectangle of varying denomination, and exchange it for tangible goods and services is, at the very least, a system of belief.
How we carry our money, and how we’ve evolved to think about our money, is an even stranger anthropological phenomenon. For a while, we represented our worth exclusively in a way you could touch — cash. It was finite, and it kept things simple: When I’m out, I’m out. The rise of plastic in the 1960s made commerce easier, but not simpler: When I’m out, I can still keep going. And how much do I really have, anyway?
Bron en volledig artikel: Techcrunch