Toward an Information Economy

Money began in nonliterate cultures as a commodity...[and] always retains something of its commodity and community character...Speech comes with the development of the power to let go of objects. It gives the power of detachment from the environment that is also the power of great mobility in knowledge of environment. So it is with the growth of the idea of money as currency rather than commodity...Money, as a social means of extending and amplifying work and skill in an easily accessible and portable form, lost much of its magical power with the coming of representative money, or paper money...Today, as the new vortices of power are shaped by the instant electric interdependence of all men on this planet, the visual factor in social organization and in personal experience recedes, and money begins to be less and less a means of storing or exchanging work and skill.

--"Money"
from Understanding Media
Marshall McLuhan, 1964