New Money

How Payment Became Social Media

By: Lana Swartz

Narrated by: Teri Schnaubelt

A new vision of money as a communication technology that creates and sustains invisible - often exclusive - communities.

One of the basic structures of everyday life, money is at its core a communication media. Payment systems - cash, card, app, or Bitcoin - are informational and symbolic tools that integrate us into, or exclude us from, the society that surrounds us. Examining the social politics of financial technologies, Lana Swartz reveals what's at stake when we pay.

This accessible and insightful analysis comes at a moment of disruption: from "fin-tech" startups to cryptocurrency schemes, a variety of technologies are poised to unseat traditional financial infrastructures. Swartz explains these changes, traces their longer histories, and demonstrates their consequences. Getting paid and paying determines whether or not you can put food on the table. She shows just how important these invisible systems are. The data that payment produces is uniquely revelatory - and newly valuable. New forms of money create new forms of identity, new forms of community, and new forms of power.

©2020 Lana Swartz (P)2020 Tantor

A fascinating way to think about money

Fascinating to learn the history of what money communicates, how it interacts with society, and what it says about us. Some great theoretical work, but easy to follow and listen to. Thank you for a great book!

Great introduction to FinTech's social aspects

Great introduction to FinTech's social aspects and societal impacts. if you're familiar with FinTech, it lacks