Bruce Sterling wrote a fascinating piece about what money is and what it will become in the future for Forbes.
Money is a form of computation: As money is transferred from one eager owner to another, it computes the value of goods and services. At its best, the machine automatically arbitrages the value of goods and services between different monetary systems. Money fluctuates in value against other currencies, sometimes wildly. We cannot invent a stable money any more than we have ever invented a fully stable computer operating system. Why? Because we don't want fully stable computers. Only boring people with no sense of invention or enterprise would use them. Money that worked perfectly would lack all entrepreneurial opportunity. We don't use money merely to generate wealth. We use money to create new methods of generating wealth.
