TEARS AND FEARSPhilip Davis, professor emeritus of applied mathematics, Brown University There are so many new commercial electronic, computer-driven products available these days that their technological aspects bore me to tears. Despite the fact that some of them--voice identification, for example--have a considerable, often deep mathematical underlay, what interests me now is what these products will do to and for society.
Money is one of the first and most pervasive of all the mathematizations that civilized society has adopted. If one excepts--these days--the vast amount of computation that occurs in data transmission and signal processing, then probably the bulk of all computations done relates to money. The progression toward more and more abstract, virtual, or meta-moneys, toward the transfer, conversion, unification, and diversification of money will go on ceaselessly.
What is underdiscussed, particularly among technologists, is what the pluses and minuses of this trend will be for human behavior and daily life. The pluses stand out more than the minuses: what a convenience it is to have atms available; how wonderful it would be not to have to change money (and lose 10 percent) every time you cross a European border. Every money product is on the market, and it lives or dies by the market. Do you want to talk directly to a gas pump when you fill up instead of shoving in a piece of plastic? The technology is here, but does anyone want it?
Further questions include: What is the psychological relation between the possession of virtual money and the ownership of real property? What are the job prospects for the millions of employees who handle money when computerization throws them out of work? Will on-line shopping destroy department stores, malls? Great? Yes? No? Local bookstores are already seriously threatened. As money becomes more and more virtual, what happens to the inequalities in access to it? Can the automatized buying and selling of stock shares or futures lead to instabilities and market crashes? Anyone with a bit of imagination can devise answers to these scenarios, but the "law of unanticipated consequences" always lurks around the corner.
