The movement from the physical to the ethereal to the material-magical follows a three-stage process. First, there is the thing itself - let's say gold. It has an objective value, and it served as transactional currency for centuries. Eventually, gold was replaced by paper money representing gold or another precious metal. Gold and silver certificates were, origianlly, redeemable for a specifies amount of metal. The government had this metal sitting in a vault somewhere, and the leader's portrait or his treasurer's signature on the face of the note attested to this fact. Money, in this second, metaphorical stage of its development, became much more ethereal. The paper stood for something else: metal. Its value was based in our trust of our leaders and their repositories. When the dollar was taken off the silver standard, it reached its third, most magical level: the Federal Reserve note. As the bill no longer represented anything tangible other than "legal tender," the Treasury began to print a fascinating motto (already in use on coinage) on its back: In God We Trust. The bill came to represent nothing more than information. There was no longer any fixed amount of gold to back it up. Now the dollar itself was to generate its own, instrinsic value, not representing, but rather performing, or recapitulating, the function of gold. In order for it to do so, though, the spiritual forces must be invoked. The Federal Reserve note itself is invested with totemic value. Even when stored magnetically as debit or credit, a dollar is linked to God, not gold. We take it on faith.
- Douglas Rushkoff, Screenagers