Opening Keynote: Money in the Digital Revolution

Keith Hart, Goldsmith's College

An update of what I have learned in the last decade about the central thesis of my book, The Memory Bank: Money in an Unequal World (written 1998-9), concerning the potential for developing money forms more conducive to economic democracy in the context of the digital revolution in communications and the formation of a world society whose symbol is the internet.

Comments

[EDMBloggerCrystal]

Keith Hart's opening keynote covered broad historical themes of capitalist attitudes about currency as it relates to the state. Hart discussed the major points of his book, The Memory Bank (1999) which detailed the digital revolution's impact on exchange. He described that it was written very much in the spirit of he 1990s; that in this era, it was not difficult to "write the state out" of the story-it was a period of revolution and democratic utopian dreaming.
His keynote reminded participants that the state is back in the game. The neoliberal consensus is waning. In light of this transformation, and indeed the technological advances, Hart asked how the ethnographic revolution can appeal to these changes as well as historical conceptions of money?
Next, Hart discussed money's relational character. Currency was first needed to be impersonal, that is, to bridge individuals who didn't know and trust one another, for exchanging goods. Hart proposed in The Memory Bank the notion of 'repersonalization' as a change induced by the digital revolution. He ultimately rejected that the digital revolution would reverse such a quality. Still, he noted that the revolution has sought to replicate face-to-face interaction from great distances. In that way, he observed the sense that the world is coming together is not new.
In all, it was a fabulous speech that ended with a call to not throw the baby out with the bath water when criticizing both the Marxist and neoliberal efforts of the last thirty years, and also to remember the importance of bringing exchange into the public arena.