Into the cauldron of change we’d have to add the creation and adoption of Twitter to the riot of world wide communications channels that have been born. I attended the presentation of the 21st Century Visionary Award ceremony at the
Commonwealth Club of California where Jack Dorsey the man who is credited with creating Twitter. Was I loaded with doubts when I arrived and had my mind changed by the time I left. Jack Dorsey has also launched a second device
called Square. It is an electronic gizmo that allows anyone to take a debit/credit payment instantly with their smart phone. Customers can sign, receipts can automatically be emailed, a spread sheet tracks all the transactions, it is really quite interesting. The whole point of the exercise is to dispense with clunky credit card machines, allows a user to register, download the app, and almost immediately begin accepting electronic payments for services or products they are selling. If you have ever tried to get a standard credit card machine set up for business you know how difficult that process is. The big change in what this whole wave of technologies that is sweeping over us is to think of capitalism as having a dark side and on the other hand having a lighter side. Premise the notion that by decentralizing the power to take payments to virtually anyone and we have a way to expand economic activities, not just preserve them for the few enterprises that can jump through all the hoops. These technologies resist the tendency to make cartels, and erect barriers to competitors. We don’t have to listen to the news from New York we can read the tweets of actual citizens in the midst of a revolution in real
time, or take a payment right now, right from our shop, in our garage, perhaps the stain glass panel we created, or the book we wrote, or the plumbing repair we just provided. Awesome, innovative, powerful new tools….
