Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- PART ONE PROLOGUE
- PART TWO PRIVACY AND TECHNOLOGY
- PART THREE DOING BUSINESS ONLINE
- 6 Ecash
- 7 Contracts in Cyberspace
- 8 Watermarks and Barbed Wire
- 9 Reactionary Progress – Amateur Scholars and Open Source
- 10 Intermission: What's a Meta Phor?
- PART FOUR CRIME AND CONTROL
- PART FIVE BIOTECHNOLOGIES
- PART SIX THE REAL SCIENCE FICTION
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
6 - Ecash
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 August 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- PART ONE PROLOGUE
- PART TWO PRIVACY AND TECHNOLOGY
- PART THREE DOING BUSINESS ONLINE
- 6 Ecash
- 7 Contracts in Cyberspace
- 8 Watermarks and Barbed Wire
- 9 Reactionary Progress – Amateur Scholars and Open Source
- 10 Intermission: What's a Meta Phor?
- PART FOUR CRIME AND CONTROL
- PART FIVE BIOTECHNOLOGIES
- PART SIX THE REAL SCIENCE FICTION
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
I pay for things in one of three different ways – credit card, check, or cash. The first two let me make large payments without having to carry large amounts of money. What are the advantages of the third?
One is that a seller does not have to know anything about me in order to accept cash. That makes money a better medium for transactions with strangers, especially strangers from far away. It also makes it a better medium for small transactions, since using cash avoids the fixed costs of checking up on someone to make sure that there is really money in his checking account or that his credit is good. It also means that money leaves no paper trail, which is useful not only for criminals but for anyone who wants to protect his privacy – an increasingly important issue in a world where data processing threatens to make every detail of our lives public.
The advantage of money is greater in cyberspace, since transactions with strangers, including strangers far away, are more likely on the Internet than in my realspace neighborhood. The disadvantage is less, since my ecash would be stored inside my computer, which is usually inside my house, and hence less vulnerable to theft than my wallet.
Despite its potential usefulness, there is as yet no equivalent of cash available online, although there have been unsuccessful attempts to create one and successful attempts to create something close.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Future ImperfectTechnology and Freedom in an Uncertain World, pp. 83 - 96Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2008