The initial response to The End of Money has been tremendous. Here is an excerpt posted by TheAtlantic.com, as well as recent interviews with Gizmodo and Wisconsin Public Radio's "To The Best of Our Knowledge." MSN picked up a smart piece written by Suzanne McGee for the Fiscal Times, and I'm going to be on Lou Dobbs' radio show Feb. 10. Keep an eye open for the Boston Globe and Salon next week, as well as an essay I wrote for the Wall Street Journal, which is slated to run this weekend.
Meanwhile, there are some lively, some absurd, and some fascinating comments piling up, both in the comments section below the reviews for the book on the Amazon page, and on the Wired page for my Trash Blaster story. It makes the geek in me proud to know that people will actually read a story I wrote about plasma gasification of municipal solid waste--and want to discuss it with others when they're done.
Thursday, February 9, 2012
Friday, February 3, 2012
sprinting
launch date approaches
Huge news! Amazon has put The End of Money in the No.3 slot for it's list of the 10 Best Books of the Month. Huge honor. Here's the Amazon review:
Say good-bye to your beloved Benjamins, because the world is going cashless. So says David Wolman, and in The End of Money, he explores the drastic implications. How is it happening? What's at stake? Why does it matter? Each chapter of this timely and fascinating book focuses on a specific aspect of the coming cashlessness. Its cast of compelling characters includes an end-times fundamentalist who views the growing obsolescence of cash as a sign of the coming rapture; an Icelandic artist whose claim to fame illustrates the complicated relationship between cash and nationalism; an American libertarian and coin-maker convicted on federal charges for the distribution of "Liberty" coins and Ron Paul dollars; and an Indian software engineer (self-billed as "the assassin of cash") whose firm is enabling digital payment methods that are lifting the living standards of thousands of poor New Dehli residents via their cell phones. Raising the stakes with a personal experiment, Wolman goes (almost) a full year without using cash at all. All told, The End of Money offers everything there is to love about popular nonfiction, rendering a complex subject entertaining and easily approachable for a wide audience while proving the ultimate adventurousness inherent in a curiosity about the workings of the world. --Jason Kirk
And here's Booklist:
Money: we crave it, chase it, love it, and despise it. But do we ever really think about it? Money, the cash kind in the form of coins and banknotes, has little intrinsic value and since 1971 has had nothing tangible backing it. It's value is based solely on the faith and trust we put in the institutions behind it, and it's the lifeblood of commerce. Wolman takes us on a tour of the history of currency from the first paper money issued in China to the colonial hodgepodge of bills that ultimately became the greenback... more
Say good-bye to your beloved Benjamins, because the world is going cashless. So says David Wolman, and in The End of Money, he explores the drastic implications. How is it happening? What's at stake? Why does it matter? Each chapter of this timely and fascinating book focuses on a specific aspect of the coming cashlessness. Its cast of compelling characters includes an end-times fundamentalist who views the growing obsolescence of cash as a sign of the coming rapture; an Icelandic artist whose claim to fame illustrates the complicated relationship between cash and nationalism; an American libertarian and coin-maker convicted on federal charges for the distribution of "Liberty" coins and Ron Paul dollars; and an Indian software engineer (self-billed as "the assassin of cash") whose firm is enabling digital payment methods that are lifting the living standards of thousands of poor New Dehli residents via their cell phones. Raising the stakes with a personal experiment, Wolman goes (almost) a full year without using cash at all. All told, The End of Money offers everything there is to love about popular nonfiction, rendering a complex subject entertaining and easily approachable for a wide audience while proving the ultimate adventurousness inherent in a curiosity about the workings of the world. --Jason Kirk
And here's Booklist:
Money: we crave it, chase it, love it, and despise it. But do we ever really think about it? Money, the cash kind in the form of coins and banknotes, has little intrinsic value and since 1971 has had nothing tangible backing it. It's value is based solely on the faith and trust we put in the institutions behind it, and it's the lifeblood of commerce. Wolman takes us on a tour of the history of currency from the first paper money issued in China to the colonial hodgepodge of bills that ultimately became the greenback... more
Saturday, January 28, 2012
here comes the end of money!
From Publishers Weekly
Money is a hot topic--Wired magazine contributing editor Wolman observes that it is paradoxically something we think about "always and never." Tangible cash, on the other hand, is something "we think we know." However, Wolman believes that physical cash will soon cease to be. He explores this compelling possibility by talking with a number of fascinating characters, such as Pastor Glenn Guest of Bowman, GA, who, citing the biblical book of Revelation, believes the end of cash is the beginning of the end of the world; convicted counterfeiter Bernard von NotHaus; and Delhiite Sonu Kumar, who uses his cell phone to remotely update his State Bank of India account, a technological advancement that Wolman notes could be "the angel of death" to the paper and coin system. Cash alternatives are already in place, whether we acknowledge or recognize them as such, and Wolman (A Left-Hand Turn Around the World) reviews a few, including Kilowatt Cards and Disney Dollars. Just as interesting is Wolman's discussion of money, culture, and poverty: is cash truly--as Ignacio Mas of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation claims--the "enemy of the poor"? If cash goes away, will that really lead to financial inclusion for the world's poor? Wolman's writing is clear and thoughtful, and his use of characters and places add color and personality to this excellent investigation of a timely topic.
Money is a hot topic--Wired magazine contributing editor Wolman observes that it is paradoxically something we think about "always and never." Tangible cash, on the other hand, is something "we think we know." However, Wolman believes that physical cash will soon cease to be. He explores this compelling possibility by talking with a number of fascinating characters, such as Pastor Glenn Guest of Bowman, GA, who, citing the biblical book of Revelation, believes the end of cash is the beginning of the end of the world; convicted counterfeiter Bernard von NotHaus; and Delhiite Sonu Kumar, who uses his cell phone to remotely update his State Bank of India account, a technological advancement that Wolman notes could be "the angel of death" to the paper and coin system. Cash alternatives are already in place, whether we acknowledge or recognize them as such, and Wolman (A Left-Hand Turn Around the World) reviews a few, including Kilowatt Cards and Disney Dollars. Just as interesting is Wolman's discussion of money, culture, and poverty: is cash truly--as Ignacio Mas of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation claims--the "enemy of the poor"? If cash goes away, will that really lead to financial inclusion for the world's poor? Wolman's writing is clear and thoughtful, and his use of characters and places add color and personality to this excellent investigation of a timely topic.
Monday, January 23, 2012
the trash blaster
(My latest for Wired magazine is now live)
From the highway, one of the biggest landfills in the US doesn’t look at all like a dump. It’s more like a misplaced mesa. Only when you drive closer to the center of operations at the 700-acre Columbia Ridge Landfill in Arlington, Oregon, does the function of this place become clear. Some 35,000 tons of mostly household trash arrive here weekly by train from Seattle and by truck from Portland.
Dump trucks inch up the gravel road to the top of the heap, where they tip their cargo of dirty diapers, discarded furniture, lemon rinds, spent lightbulbs, Styrofoam peanuts, and all the rest onto a carefully flattened blanket of dirt. At night, more dump trucks spread another layer of dirt over the day’s deposits, preventing trash from escaping on the breeze.
But as of November, not all the trash arriving at Columbia Ridge has ended up buried. On the southwest side of the landfill, bus-sized containers of gas connect to ribbons of piping, which run into a building that looks like an airplane hangar with a loading dock. Here, dump trucks also offload refuse. This trash, however, is destined for a special kind of treatment—one that could redefine how we think about trash.
Dump trucks inch up the gravel road to the top of the heap, where they tip their cargo of dirty diapers, discarded furniture, lemon rinds, spent lightbulbs, Styrofoam peanuts, and all the rest onto a carefully flattened blanket of dirt. At night, more dump trucks spread another layer of dirt over the day’s deposits, preventing trash from escaping on the breeze.
But as of November, not all the trash arriving at Columbia Ridge has ended up buried. On the southwest side of the landfill, bus-sized containers of gas connect to ribbons of piping, which run into a building that looks like an airplane hangar with a loading dock. Here, dump trucks also offload refuse. This trash, however, is destined for a special kind of treatment—one that could redefine how we think about trash.
In an era when it’s getting more and more confusing to determine where to toss your paper coffee cup—compost? recycle? trash? arrrgh!—and when no one seems to have a viable solution to the problem of humanity’s ever-expanding rubbish pile, this plant represents a step toward radical simplification. It uses plasma gasification, a technology that turns trash into a fuel without producing emissions. In other words: a guilt-free solution to our waste problems. More
Sunday, January 22, 2012
how wall street can save the earth
IN APRIL 2010, Bud Sturmak, director of the investment-and-consulting firm RLP Capital, was at his Manhattan apartment when he heard something about an explosion on an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico. It would be weeks before the nation grasped the full magnitude of the Deepwater Horizon spill, but as the nightmare unfolded, Sturmak quickly realized he needed to get on the phone. He had millions of dollars of his clients’ money tied up in so-called socially responsible funds, and, as he recalls, “I wanted to find out which of these funds were invested in BP.”
As hard as it is to believe these days, before Deepwater Horizon happened British Petroleum was in good standing with many moderate environmentalists. The company was pumping millions into biofuel research and solar technologies, and receiving accolades for doing so. BP executives were even speaking up about climate change and pushing the now defunct Beyond Petroleum campaign.
Greenwashing? Sure, but it worked. BP was perceived as greener than other oil behemoths, and that made it a popular pick for socially responsible stock portfolios. When Deepwater Horizon blew, many principled investors were stuck holding a bag full of dead pelicans and aggrieved Gulf Coast fishermen. More
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