Description
Notes Hart, an anthropologist who has taught at Yale and Cambridge: "Half the world worships money and the other half thinks of it as the root of all evil. In either case, money makes the world go round." Hart shows why the latest stage of technological convergence a communications revolution in which only a tiny fraction of the global population participates fully is both the means of improved social connection on a planetary scale and also the main source of escalating economic inequality at all levels. He presents a case for thinking of the present age of money instead as a possible prelude to the formation of a world society "fit for humanity as a whole, one in which the administration of justice for all could be a realistic goal, and money and markets would become the instruments of economic democracy that they are falsely represented to be today." Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
Read More
Hart believes that humanity stands on the threshold of a new era in which there will be a pressing need to develop, conceptually and in practice, an awareness of the common problems facing world society as a whole. We have scarcely begun to contemplate how to establish and maintain the social, technological and cultural infrastructures we will need to survive in the 21st century. In a polarized world characterized by staggering economic inequalities, recent advances in technology offer radical possibilities for the development of human freedom and equality. Hart’s particular focus in this book is the Internet, which he argues holds the potential for a re-personalization of economic relations. In this world, new means of exchange could be harnessed to the ends of a truer economic democracy. Money is the problem, but it is also the solution. Hart, an anthropologist by training, offers a new view on the interaction between money, capitalism, and culture – now, in the future, and throughout history. The many important strands of thought and experience in this book will challenge established views from all quarters of economic, political, and social thought.
Read Less