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
First off, I would like to say I enjoyed your blog entry. It is quite thought evoking and I even went to go check out the Mass Effect Wiki. It never even dawned on me how the currency of the ENTIRE GALAXY is all one currency "credits". I am glad you brought that to light. One thing I don't remember is if the credits had a physical form or if they were in the form of cards that had "value" to them. But upon reading the wiki, it appears the credits are just that, an internet currency. Of course it it a little more complex than that,but in essence that is what it is. Although it says that physical currency is hard to track, the same can be said about cryptocurrency. There are many sites, .tor or onion sites that make it nearly impossible to track who or where the money came from. I was listening to NPR the other day and they were talking about how a guy has a site for "assassinations" where one pays in bit-coins to "bid" for an elected official to
ReplyDeleteget assassinated, once the funds are high enough. The assassin takes the money and supposedly kills the target. The interviewer was unsure if any assassinations have come to fruition as a result of this site. But thats something to think about!
Quin
I agree with you about virtual banking having its flaws. With places like Bitcoin, virtual banking is becoming more and more anonymous. The money they used is hard to track if it's traceable at all. I believe that in Mass Effect, there are side missions that revolve around credits and dealing with issues like this. But even then it has it's flaws. It will be very interesting to see where virtual banking will take us.
DeleteI gotta say I love the connection to Mass Effect. It does pose the question of what we'll do as a race where we can meet an equal exchange of equivalency with other races. Every time I go to the movies, my mom and I point out how many post apocalyptic and space themed movies there are.
ReplyDeleteThe movies I can list that are space themed:
Elysium, After Earth, Star Trek Into Darkness, Riddick, Alien series, Avatar, Ender's Game, Galaxy Quest, etc.
There is a certain draw to the advancement of the future and it shows in our culture through movies and games especially since they can visually create a scenarios for people to view the galatic future.
One thing I thought about on the theme of space and how humans evolve after the ability to travel the universe is from Firefly. If you haven't seen it, it's only a season long. Its about a renegade crew that travels the galaxy on Serenity, their ship, exploring new planets and doing odd end jobs under the radar of the Alliance and out of sight of warring factions. As a form of communication between aliens and humans alike, Chinese (Specifically mandarin) becomes a second language that everyone is familiar with and has been integrated into communication. This forms a common ground in which aliens and humans use to communicate with one another. It's not currency or galactic money exactly, but it is a form in which aliens and humans connect themselves.
I do wish they would fix my account and allow me to log onto my account for my bank via my phone. With the change to digital banking and dwindling need for physical currency; there is a certain danger to this change. Using online anything is a danger to some degree with the wrong people. I remember back in December-November, many people encountered account hacking when the purchased items from Target during Black Friday. It was a huge scandal.