Re: nettime: Anarchives: Electronic Commerce

[t byfield <tbyfield@panix.com>]

At 4:22 PM -0500 on 6/1/98, jesse hirsh wrote:

> Before the 1970s, the world economy was worth its weight in gold, as each
> nation guaranteed it's money and debt to be interchangeable with a gold
> standard. <...> The Foreign Exchange market quickly became an autonomous
> entity, <...> In 1997, 90% of the world's wealth travels through electronic
> networks in New York City every day. <...>

	These kinds of rehashed platitudes of corporatist ideological twaddle
seem to be happily oblivious of the fact that baroque, derivative
representations of the world actually refer to real things--things that,
for example, can't be squeezed through copper wires. If 90% of "the world's
wealth" can pass through a the phone lines of the Rotten Apple, then it
would seem that this definition of "the world's wealth" is meaningless. And
foreign exchange markets are "an autonomous entity"? To begin with, they
aren't an entity; but if you manage to stretch your definitions far enough
to make them into one, then there's no need to remark that it's
"autonomous."

Ted


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