New Money: How Payment Became Social Media

by Lana Swartz

A new vision of money as a communication technology that creates and sustains invisible—often exclusive—communities One of the basic structures of everyday life, money is at its core a communication media. Payment systems—cash, card, app, or Bitcoin—are informational and symbolic tools that integrate us into, or exclude us from, the society that surrounds us. Examining the social politics of financial technologies, Lana Swartz reveals what’s at stake when we pay.   This accessible and insightful analysis comes at a moment of from “fin-tech” startups to cryptocurrency schemes, a variety of technologies are poised to unseat traditional financial infrastructures. Swartz explains these changes, traces their longer histories, and demonstrates their consequences. Getting paid and paying determines whether or not you can put food on the table. She shows just how important these invisible systems are. The data that payment produces is uniquely revelatory—and newly valuable. New forms of money create new forms of identity, new forms of community, and new forms of power.

Genres: Economics, Nonfiction, Technology

270 pages, Kindle Edition

Published May 1, 2020

Reviews

[Warren Mcpherson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tracing the relationships between money, communication technology, and society this is a very well researched and insightful book that focuses on transactions and human experience.
"Silicon Valley feudalism is not peer-to-peer technology; rather, it bestows a peerage."

The book tells a story of the American Post Office and Western Union evolving from parcel delivery into money orders and the implications that have for finance as money orders made out to oneself were used as a form of savings. Emphasis is given to the role of national currency in the transition from feudalism to modern liberal democracy. It is coveted and symbolic, a widely circulated opportunity for propaganda.

It was interesting to see an executive of Diners Club in the 60's predicting the end of cash, expecting cash would not keep up in the jet age. Describing the role of state-level bank regulation in the development of Visa and Mastercard as "open networks" there were a couple of places where the author seemed to digress further into the technical detail of the operation of credit card networks than was needed.

The discussion of Venmo seems superfluous at first. But it does a great job of extending the development through the current tense. Our experience with money has been perpetually changing over the last hundred years. Increasingly we need to consider emergent behavior. Unintended consequences are bound to continue and it's a good idea to think about the "perpetual beta" state of network technology.

The thing that is special about this analysis is the emphasis on how people experience and use money. The post office, Western Union and American Express responded to demand in supporting travelers. Early credit cards were clearly positioned as premium products. I wasn't convinced the "transactional communities" they formed were significant but the idea is interesting. The discussion of privacy and loyalty programs was sobering. The connection between "food stamps for truckers" and the economic reality of the peasantry under feudalism is worth considering.

Several times I have seen people raise the information or communication element of money and usually, the analysis seems fetishistic. This book develops a well-grounded and insightful analysis where other very smart analysts have stumbled.

[Gino Luciano · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fantastic book!
I have been looking for a good book that discusses the future of money and FinTech generally.
I was not disappointed.
Lana Swartz did a masterful job laying everything out in this book without spending too much time in any one area.

[SY · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was slightly disappointing. The two chapters on the evolution of money as communication were solidly written overview-of-history type pieces, which was useful for my purpose. And it was an area that was clearly the most familiar to the author. The chapters that followed however were thin on both detail and insight. More than a couple of moments in the book felt like crypto-anarchy soft-selling, which is fine if the author had taken that position with less subtlety and proceeded to do the selling. This book is pro-currency future. I am open to being convinced I just wished that the text had worked a little harder.

[Abhi Yerra · Rating 4 out of 5]

Money as Imagined Communities is what the author is seeming to get at. Basically money and the type of money used whether cash, debit, credit, rewards points says something about you as an individual but that also creates the community that you belong to. It is interesting to think of money as a marketing mass media mechanism and its transition to a social media type mechanism where different types of money exist in different spaces.

[Maya23 · Rating 1 out of 5]

The author clearly does not know what she is talking about. She knows neither monetary theory, not the technology behind modern payment systems. She keeps getting distracted by topics, that are completely irrelevant to the theme of the book, like Donald Trump and social justice. Waste of time.

[Mike Burrell · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a really good book. Maybe a bit too American for me, but it was very well researched and well set out.

[Ietrio · Rating 1 out of 5]

A greedy governmental bureaucrat who needs more ”published works” in order to take more money from the taxes collected from the working people.

[Sophiepedia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Buena introducción a como funciona el dinero y que significa socializar el dinero.

[Paweł Rusin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some interesting details on the history of credit cards and the inner workings of credit cards companies but very shallow on the main idea of the book itself.