twitter dollars are at the opposite end of the spectrum of managing national currencies to resolve geo-political tensions and relations:
monetizing social relations gets dicey-er the closer to home one gets. transactionallized prostitution is illegal, but sex is institutionalized (for example, a marriage contract isnt valid until the relationship has been consummated). This wizardly desire to transmute value from one thing to another, and make it liquid has been the long trend of financial innovations over the past several thousand years. Drawing the boundaries of where one stops using precise mechanisms to relate is an open sociological and political question.
One trouble many have with transactionallizing relationships is that the contract of relationship ends once the payment is made, whereas a gift economy gives a psychic bond that strengthens (for better or worse) the relationship.
paypal, gift economies, and upstart community currencies all experiment with the boundaries of where the marketplace ends and where the social "economy" begins. what an interesting question of selling your soul to the devil. or to your wife.
The Twollars idea was conceived by Internet entrepreneurs Eiso Kant and Mac
Taylor. They noticed that there was an enormous amount of 'social energy' on
Twitter that goes unmeasured. They realised that if this energy could be
converted into a symbolic standard, it could then be passed around like a
currency.
monetizing social relations gets dicey-er the closer to home one gets. transactionallized prostitution is illegal, but sex is institutionalized (for example, a marriage contract isnt valid until the relationship has been consummated). This wizardly desire to transmute value from one thing to another, and make it liquid has been the long trend of financial innovations over the past several thousand years. Drawing the boundaries of where one stops using precise mechanisms to relate is an open sociological and political question.
One trouble many have with transactionallizing relationships is that the contract of relationship ends once the payment is made, whereas a gift economy gives a psychic bond that strengthens (for better or worse) the relationship.
paypal, gift economies, and upstart community currencies all experiment with the boundaries of where the marketplace ends and where the social "economy" begins. what an interesting question of selling your soul to the devil. or to your wife.
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