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

financial transactions. So it is no surprise that money is again in the
forefront in computerized cyberspace.
We can expect fundamental changes not only in payment systems
for conventional currencies, but also the emergence of new types of
money.
Post Industrial Society = Knowledge Age
In the 1940s, IBM's first Chairman, Thomas Watson, predicted a
world market for 'maybe five computers'. By 1975, about 50,000 were
operating, and in 1997 more than 140 million. By 1999, there are an
additional 600 million computers-on-a-card currently in use
worldwide, as well as the innumerable 'invisible computers' that are
built into routine appliances - a typical car today contains more
computer-processing power than the first spacecraft that landed on
the moon in 1969.
The reason for this explosive proliferation is simple: never before
has the world seen such a dizzying drop in the price of an industrial
product. We have become used to the idea that today's Pound 1,000
laptop packs more power than the Pound 10 million mainframe of 20
years ago. If car efficiency and costs had followed the same trend,
you would now drive from Lisbon to Oslo and back to London via
Athens on a fraction of a drop of petrol in a car costing less than
Pound 1.
When steam power was introduced, it was not much cheaper than
waterpower, and it took from 1790 to 1850 for its real price to be cut
in half. Likewise, it took between 1890 and 1930 for the price of
electricity to drop by just over half. In contrast, the cost of computing
power halves every 18 months. Named after the President of Intel,
'Moore's law' actually describes an even more impressive rate: every
18 months, computational speed doubles and the price drops by half.