Understanding New Media
Extending Marshall McLuhan – Second Edition
Series:
Robert K. Logan
Chapter 14. Money
Extract
← 138 | 139 →
· 14 ·
MONEY
Content and extension: Money is a portable medium of exchange and hence is an extension of the labor that was required to acquire it. The original content of money was gold or silver in the form of coins, which became extended to paper certificates that could be used to recover gold held by the government to back up the paper money. Paper money then became an abstract quantity of value that facilitated commerce when currency was detached from the gold standard in the USA in 1971. Its content was the trust that it could be redeemed for commodities with intrinsic value.
Cascade: The cascade is from precious metals to paper certificates backed by stored gold to paper money with no intrinsic value but used by governments as a unit for exchange and trade.
LOM: Money enhances commerce, obsolesces barter, retrieves conspicuous consumption, and reverses into credit.
14.1 Impact of “New Media” on Money
In Chapter 4 we noted that one of the effects of the “new media” was an intensification of the effects that electric mass media created as a result of the speed-up of the access to information. We encounter still another example ← 139 | 140 → of this when we consider the impact of the “new media” on money. We may regard money as the medium through which commerce or trade is executed. Before there was any form of money, commerce or...
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