Technology has rapidly advanced in the past 50 years or so. With advances towards online currency, we depend more and more on computers to do our banking for us. Like Shannon mentioned in her blog post, our world is vastly changing towards only online banking. Paper money and cash could diminish to nothing with more and more people using mobile or online banking. Places like Canada have already taken actions to eradicate the penny. Bestselling author and educational youtube blogger John Green made an entire video towards his hatred of pennies and urges the US to do the same. With things changing so rapidly towards online banking, people wonder what will happen next.
I am not sure what will happen next year, or in the next 10 years, or even the next 100 years. But one can easily imagine what could happen in the future. When technology advanced and Arabic numbers and arithmetic were introduced, no one was close to being capable of leaving this earth. Not even 50 years ago, we finally landed on the moon. Since then space exploration has been a very popular theme for movies, tv, books, and video games. And with space exploration comes aliens. So what will we do if aliens are peaceful and want to trade with us? What currency will we use to pay for their goods, and what will we do with whatever they give us? Just like when we were seeking profit in the early Americas or going out west in search of gold, we will need to venture out and search for something we can use for profit. Maybe the world will finally come together and have a world currency that we can exchange with other alien races. Maybe human will have to resort to leaving this planet in search of something more valuable. These ideas seem very far fetched, but when we look to science fiction, we can maybe justify some of these predictions.
One of my favorite game series is Mass Effect. In the game, you earn "Credits" by completing missions, looting hideouts, and picking it up from fallen enemies. These credits are used to purchase armor, weapons, upgrades, even fish for your personal cabin. Credits are the standard galactic currency are is used by many different alien races. The Mass Effect Wiki actually has information on how credits became the standard and why. I believe that this example is something that could happen in the far out future. Science Fiction sometimes seems farfetched, but we see these far out ideas becoming more and more real every day.
With advances in technology becoming so rapid, I think that very soon we will see a change in the way we use money.
My blog comments: Comment 1, Comment 2
