An introduction to the notion of a "cashless society" and why it carries chilling potential to create a financial panopticon of monetary and transactional surveillance and data collection with unprecedented resolution. 
 

Learn what risks this possible future poses to a free and open society, including the opportunity for people on the fringe of society to be economically excluded, censored and denied access to resources by cutting off the only option for engaging in commerce or any form of monetary exchange. This is not just a chilling authoritarian dystopia, but a callously exclusive one as well, requiring anyone who wants to make even the most informal transaction to qualify for and have a valid bank account to do so. There's also the matter that cash is what's standing in the way of central and commercial banks being able to start playing around with weird fetishy monetary policies that they've dying to unleashed to try. 

 

Some alternative finance projects around the world aren't necessarily holding out for cash to prevail as a vital outlet to a total bank-controlled pay-by-proxy nightmare economy with no actual way to directly access state money. The principals of economic activism efforts, community currencies and other radical approaches to hacking money systems vary considerably when viewed in the context of the open source movement. Not all cryptocurrency advocates, for example, support the same values as open-source or even anti-surveillance. In light of its notably incoherent political dynamics, what possible roles might Bitcoin and blockchain technology play in safeguarding social interests in a future without cash?

End with a group Q&A discussion.