Development of Ideas: Trade

I have worked for a large IT company for a number of years and in the course of designing for the Marketing Division I came across a great deal of information concerning e-commerce, viral marketing, information collection and computer security. The main inspiration behind the plot line I finally developed came from learning about the present uses of information gathered by online commerce. The basic premise of the narrative is based around the concept of identity and how our security methods are moving more and more towards the deconstruction of privacy and the dissemination of our personal information; it highlights the vulnerabilities and possibilities inherent in the new forms of global online economies and how world trade may be affected. Yet before I could fully utilise my knowledge I had to pair down my thoughts to the basic ideas and begin researching. The central motifs then would become that of trade; what it was and why our personal information was so crucial to its success in this technological age.

The history of trade begins with the exchange of goods of equal worth, bartering on it's simplest scale that centres around a common perception of worth; the cow in the earliest forms of trading, but whether it was cows or cowry shells, items of worth and practical value were exchanged. As trading needs became more complex with growing societies we moved towards the exchange of a common material that denotes a specific worth to which other goods can be judged and metals became the item of choice. Precious metals did not deteriorate, and were immediately desirable; an ounce of gold from any source was the same as any other ounce of gold. However it was difficult to transport, could not be broken down to cover small amounts easily, so with safer storehouses of precious metals it became more efficient to move to the exchange of bills that promise the bearer the worth of a certain amount backed by the good name of a solvent third party or bank. Every modern currency works on this premise and every government also, the political currency that is legal tender in one country is weighed against the worth of others.

Every note carries the promise that a certain amount of gold is held in trust at the Bank of England. Despite the obvious next stage of transferring this denomination into an electronic format we have not fully embraced it simply because the technology is not sufficiently secure enough to convince the backers of the financial institutions. Also, a purely electronic currency would be apolitical. There are attempts to bring this about in the present climate, where a supposedly secure method of electronic commerce is formed from electronic currency that is backed by genuine gold reserves but many factors hinder its acceptance. However this doesn't mean that our financial transactions are not dependant upon the modern internet technologies, far from it. The intercommunication of global economies, traders, markets and governments mean that all trade is essentially bound in the security of the computer.