An Analysis of the Imbursement of Currency in a Debt-Based Money-Information System

Abstract

The imbursement of currency into modern debtbased money-information systems is a concrete phenomenon. Economic jargon traffics in abstract concepts. This analysis attempts to bridge the gap between the abstract and the concrete and to provide practical insights into certain social consequences of different modes of currency imbursement. Information science, like economics, has developed as an analytic science. Many reasons might explain that development. Not least among them is the daunting complexity of the matter-energy systems they concern. Button and Dourish (1996) provide an interesting view of the role of systems design to provide an opaque barrier for decisionmakers against that complexity while enabling engagement. That conceptual distance can give a false sense that the design of information systems should be limited only by imagination. Many definitions of information have been proposed and some have gained acceptance in certain circles. In some highly abstracted systems, Bateson’s (1972, xxv-xxvi) “difference that makes a difference” has appeal. Nevertheless, when we consider that technology emerges in self-organizing, evolving living systems that exist in physical space-time, that definition has little explanatory power. Alternatively, Shannon’s H restatement of the measure of entropy (Shannon, 1948) that became known as a measure of information is significantly explicatory of an essential connection between information and matter-energy processes. Shannon’s treatment of information as a reduction of uncertainty has found wide application.