Money loosed change upon the world.
It was the OG social technology on which our civilization was built, turning value into a symbolic language that moves easily across space, time and culture. Money is the air we breathe. It surrounds us and permeates so much of our daily lives that we take for granted that it’s really just an idea some proto-tech bros invented some five thousand years ago.
That is the key idea behind MarketWatch’s “Best New Ideas in Money” series.
Money is a mirror: a reflection of who we are, and what we value as a society. But money isn’t fixed. It continues to evolve. Think about the transformation wrought by the advent of insurance, bonds, stocks, mortgages, credit cards and scratch-off lottery tickets.
In this series we explore the next phase of money’s evolution, examining through 12 ideas the current potential to rethink money, upgrade its operating system and unlock exciting new possibilities.
The stories cover not only financial-technology, or “fintech,” innovations such as mobile payments and cryptocurrencies but new thinking around how we measure the economy, how we fund medical research and higher education, and how we save, borrow and invest.
In selecting which new ideas to highlight, we tried to avoid pure speculation and pie-in-the-sky futurism, focusing instead on concepts that are already showing promise.
The “Best New Ideas in Money” articles will appear throughout October. Let us know what you think, and what you think we missed.
And the next time someone says it’s naïve to think an idea can change the world, tell them: “Nonsense. We’ve all got a little change in our pockets.”
Here are the first three stories to be published Monday:
1. Andrea Riquier: “How a financial innovation could find a cure for blindness”
2. Emma Court: “How changing the way we pay for health care could save money and lives”
3. Richard Eisenberg: “The ‘sidecar’ plan that could soon be attached to your 401(k)”
Jeremy Olshan is the editor-in-chief of MarketWatch.
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