Other codes fundamental to the history of civilization, such as coins, also derive their inspiration from the alphabet, understood in a physical and mathematical sense.
Sociologist Karl Polanyi considers currency a semantic system “similar in a general sense to language, writing, or weights and measures.”
Tradition has it that the coin was first minted by Croesus, king of Lydia, in the 6th century BC.
Marshall Mc Luhan states that “money, like writing, has the power to specialize and channel human energies in new directions and to separate functions, in the same way that it transposes and reduces one form of labor into another.” Money is a specialized technology, translating the work of the farmer into that of the barber, doctor or plumber.
George Sansom notes that the monetary medium in 17th-century Japan had effects not unlike the operation of printing in the West. The penetration of the monetary economy, “provoked a slow but irresistible revolution, culminating in the breakup of feudal rule and the resumption of foreign relations after more than two hundred years of isolation.”
Money is referred to as the “universal equivalent” in economics and, in particular, in Marxian theory. This expression refers to the ability of money to be widely accepted as a medium of exchange for any good or service, and as a measure of the value of any commodity.
Currency speeds up exchanges, extends organizations across space, but also allows men’s time to be stored.
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