by: Louis Rosas-Guyon III
We are a tool building animal. You can argue anything you like about evolution, but you cannot deny that humans are a tool building animal. It is our tools that have made us who we are today. Tools give us the world around us. But I’m not just referring to hammers, wrenches, bulldozers, cranes and construction tools. I am also referring to time and money. Don’t think they qualify as tools?
Time is an amazing tool. What I am specifically talking about is the measure of time. We have constantly searched for methods to make our measure of time more efficient. The first clocks ran using the sun. Then water, then gears, now we use miniature digital computers connected to a U.S. government agency that measures the oscillation between the nucleus of an atom and the surrounding electrons as the means of keeping the right time on everyone’s computer and cell phone.
Are you aware that the internet would not be able to run properly if the computers that run it are not on the same time? We are talking about possibly hundreds of thousands of computers all synchronized on the same time or else you can’t get email, news, stock information, sports scores, book reviews, shopping and all the other cool details the web brings to our fingertips.
But it’s just a tool. It doesn’t really measure time. You don’t need to get into the concepts discussed by Einstein and space-time physics to understand that you can’t really measure something as enormous as time. However, we still designed a tool to help us measure it. To keep us together. To work for us all. To keep us in synch.
We are a tool building animal. We invented money. And we did it pretty recently too. We’ve used shiny rocks. Don’t believe me? You are aware that gold is a rock, aren’t you? Shiny rocks. Some people argued that we used gold because of its relative scarcity thereby making it a valuable commodity on an international market. Sure, whatever. I think it’s because there is something in the human animal that still likes shiny rocks. We even wear it as decoration!
But not too long ago we changed over from shiny rocks and now we use fabric. It even sounds weird but it’s true. We use fabric. Paper money is made from paper made of rags. Cotton or linen fabric is beaten to create cotton or linen fibers. You have probably heard of "rag paper" or "fine linen writing paper." Our money is made of fabric.
But we call it Paper and our paper is valuable because we all agree that it is valuable! I will give it to you another way: what happens tomorrow if we find out that there has suddenly been a massive wave of counterfeit currency into the economy thereby completely destabilizing the entire global economy and the world governments all agree that the international currency for the sale and exchange of goods would be diamonds? How rich are you then? Do you agree or disagree with this new system of exchange?
So, paper money is valuable because we all agree it is valuable. No more shiny rocks, just paper.
We’re even moving away from that. Yes, now we are moving towards electron storage of our valuable paper. And we have plastic to use it. We don’t even really need the paper (unless we want to do something untraceable!), now we can use our little plastic cards to get stuff.
So work hard in somewhere surrounded by idiots so you can get as many of those stored electrons on your little plastic card. Some of them can even have your face printed on it! You have been given the ultimate tool to help separate you from your stored electrons. I have one too. I almost wish we went back to shiny rocks. They were prettier. And it took longer to spend them.
We are a tool building animal. Some of them are great tools. They keep us together. They keep us in synch. They give us a way to be purposely rude by being late for appointments. Are you aware that time is so important to the United States government that we have the Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology, and its military counterpart, the U. S. Naval Observatory working together to make sure we keep accurate time? It keeps us beating to a similar heartbeat. We built an amazing tool.
But they have also found a way to give us too much convenience with what we earn. Think about that the next time you wave your plastic card through some gizmo. Remember, just because you have a tool doesn’t mean you need to use it.
