THE FUTURE OF MONEY Bernard A. Lietaer - library.uniteddiversity ...

asked to engage in a race blindfolded with feet and hands bound. A
20th- century pioneer, Duana Elgin, claimed mat humanity has
always been at its best when its capacities are challenged to the
maximum. We enter radically and consciously changed toward
sustainability in all domains, a we just would have to disappear like
the great lizards did before us.
'The secret of the shift has been a succession of three waves which
overlapped in time around the turn of the century. These three waves
were:
- a Value Shift Wave in which the old Modernist values were
gradually commuted into the values of the Age of integration;
- the information Wave which enabled unprecedented access to
knowledge for vast numbers of people;
- and the Money Wave whereby new money systems
complemented the old national currency system.
'In the 199o most people only were aware of the information Wave.
It was the one that the media focused on at that time. But in reality,
all three mutations were in fact already well on their way if one was
willing to peek beyond the reports from officialdom.
'Together, these three waves have given rise to accelerated change
in our economic system, where the cyber economy has become what
it is today: the largest and still the fastest-growing economy in the
world. That is why the cybersphere is the best place to observe the
current status of our monetary system. As you know, our
continuously evolving money system operates simultaneously on
different levels, ranging from the global to the local. The main
advantages of such a multiple-level money system is that each type
of activity is supported by the kind of currency best adapted to the