Our hunter-gatherer ancestors probably didn’t often catch big game but, when they did the quantity of meat would have amounted to an inconvenient surplus.
Applied to modern society, there are many examples of "virtual refrigerators":
Physical Infrastructure: Dams, reservoirs, and batteries can store surplus resources such as water and electricity, respectively, for use during shortages.
Investments: When we have excess money, we invest it in stocks, real estate, etc., hoping that it will grow over time and we can rely on it during times of financial need.
Insurance: We pay premiums when we have the financial ability to, so in the event of unexpected financial burdens (like health emergencies, property damage, etc.), the insurance acts as our "virtual refrigerator", providing resources.
Data Centers: Storing excess digital information for later use. This can be personal (like cloud storage of photos and videos) or at a larger scale (like businesses storing customer data).
Pension funds/Social Security: We pay into these systems when we are able to work, storing resources for our retirement years when our income might be lower.
As for money itself being a "virtual refrigerator", it can certainly be seen as one. Money is a universally accepted medium of exchange that allows us to store the value of our labor or goods sold, in a form that we can use to obtain what we need or want in the future. When we have a surplus of resources (like food or energy), we often sell that surplus and convert it into money. This money can then be used to purchase what we need during times of scarcity. Hence, money can act as a "virtual refrigerator", storing the value of surplus resources for future use.
I can’t help but notice the description here of a “virtual refrigerator” also fits with the description (or at least my understanding) of a meme, or memetic knowledge, complete with the “inefficiency” of - as I’m also noticing more and more in the world - the loss of original meaning and understanding from generation to generation, as this type of knowledge passes down and on.
And I would be remiss if I do not say, thank you Richard Dawkins for first describing memes. I may be wrong, but the importance of memetics seems to me to be one of the most profoundly underrated and misunderstood pieces in our understanding of human development, ironically misunderstood by most to mean nothing more than an Internet joke. Hah!
Feeling like the confounded monkey on the intricacies of crypto or block chain that require massive cooling decks, it's not in a stagnant refrigerator, although it is, but has this Virtual presence that has to be traded, as if feeding a new friend, and this appetite for transcendental transactional bliss will feed you in return. Applied as a virtual pension, the ledger would calculate citizens work over 35 service years when it can be unlocked and the bounty intact, rewarded. The big game stored in an icebox is Remote Hydrogen production that can solve the energy storage related problems in rural settings, with plenty of sun. Generating Hydrogen gas for cooking, and light industry and making abundant fresh water.
I see the analogy, but think the idea is too closely tied to the capitalist notion that things that cannot be monitized have no value, and ignores the reality that money cannot always be exchanged for what is needed.
I would love to take that history line, but the historical evidence seems to be more pessimistic:
According historian / anthropologists - money have most likely originated as a formalisation of penalty system, which was previosly based on blood feuds. Those quid pro quo food transactions went most of time on unformalized credit/debt relation based on individuals' memory and no money was needed for that. Instead of notion of money as a virtual refrigerator it was rather a softer kind of the baton.
Anything that is put into storage has a cost; there is the cost of putting something into a storable form (part of which is conversion losses/inefficiencies) and the cost of storage itself. What storage provides by way of added benefit is what I call 'time value' or the ability to defer use. If you tin tomatoes as an example, there is a thermodynamic cost of processing, pasteurisation and canning. To charge your phone is to gain time value but it also liberates you from a power socket, but there is of course, a cost to the portability (storage) of that energy. The benefit is always future availability - even in the example given here where availability is effectively being traded. Same can be said for refrigeration, drying foods, or converting electricity to hydrogen etc... I talk about that in a four part series but here is last part for anyone who is interested. https://open.substack.com/pub/michaelvigne/p/why-we-tin-tomatoes?r=2bzb33&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
I’m pretty sure the Globalist Fascist Oligarchy don’t believe in a “money refrigerator.” Their goal is to depopulate the planet down to 500 million serfs, according to the old Georgia Guidestones and Yuval Harari at the WEF.
How about books and other modern media being “virtual refrigerators of thought and progress” ?
Here is what ChatGPT thinks:
Applied to modern society, there are many examples of "virtual refrigerators":
Physical Infrastructure: Dams, reservoirs, and batteries can store surplus resources such as water and electricity, respectively, for use during shortages.
Investments: When we have excess money, we invest it in stocks, real estate, etc., hoping that it will grow over time and we can rely on it during times of financial need.
Insurance: We pay premiums when we have the financial ability to, so in the event of unexpected financial burdens (like health emergencies, property damage, etc.), the insurance acts as our "virtual refrigerator", providing resources.
Data Centers: Storing excess digital information for later use. This can be personal (like cloud storage of photos and videos) or at a larger scale (like businesses storing customer data).
Pension funds/Social Security: We pay into these systems when we are able to work, storing resources for our retirement years when our income might be lower.
As for money itself being a "virtual refrigerator", it can certainly be seen as one. Money is a universally accepted medium of exchange that allows us to store the value of our labor or goods sold, in a form that we can use to obtain what we need or want in the future. When we have a surplus of resources (like food or energy), we often sell that surplus and convert it into money. This money can then be used to purchase what we need during times of scarcity. Hence, money can act as a "virtual refrigerator", storing the value of surplus resources for future use.
Could you please ask him to explain what she means by "excess digital information"
My notebooks are a virtual refrigerator of writing. In times of drought, reading them back replenishes the well.
Exercises like this are great, and I probably overuse analogies in my own work... but I mean, how can you not?
I've described money as "frozen work", so the refrigerator metaphor isn't exactly chilling.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding the metaphor, but aren't other minds an example of virtual refrigerators?
I can’t help but notice the description here of a “virtual refrigerator” also fits with the description (or at least my understanding) of a meme, or memetic knowledge, complete with the “inefficiency” of - as I’m also noticing more and more in the world - the loss of original meaning and understanding from generation to generation, as this type of knowledge passes down and on.
And I would be remiss if I do not say, thank you Richard Dawkins for first describing memes. I may be wrong, but the importance of memetics seems to me to be one of the most profoundly underrated and misunderstood pieces in our understanding of human development, ironically misunderstood by most to mean nothing more than an Internet joke. Hah!
Feeling like the confounded monkey on the intricacies of crypto or block chain that require massive cooling decks, it's not in a stagnant refrigerator, although it is, but has this Virtual presence that has to be traded, as if feeding a new friend, and this appetite for transcendental transactional bliss will feed you in return. Applied as a virtual pension, the ledger would calculate citizens work over 35 service years when it can be unlocked and the bounty intact, rewarded. The big game stored in an icebox is Remote Hydrogen production that can solve the energy storage related problems in rural settings, with plenty of sun. Generating Hydrogen gas for cooking, and light industry and making abundant fresh water.
When I think, “store of value,” what I picture is farmers’ excess crop yields distilled into alcohol. And then Alex Hamilton taxes whiskey!
I see the analogy, but think the idea is too closely tied to the capitalist notion that things that cannot be monitized have no value, and ignores the reality that money cannot always be exchanged for what is needed.
I think that water has become less precious than it used to be because we have cracked the desalination problem. Popular Science article here: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/israel-proves-the-desalination-era-is-here/
I would love to take that history line, but the historical evidence seems to be more pessimistic:
According historian / anthropologists - money have most likely originated as a formalisation of penalty system, which was previosly based on blood feuds. Those quid pro quo food transactions went most of time on unformalized credit/debt relation based on individuals' memory and no money was needed for that. Instead of notion of money as a virtual refrigerator it was rather a softer kind of the baton.
if so, it's a pretty leaky one.
I see banks as virtual "batteries" to store human energy.
Anything that is put into storage has a cost; there is the cost of putting something into a storable form (part of which is conversion losses/inefficiencies) and the cost of storage itself. What storage provides by way of added benefit is what I call 'time value' or the ability to defer use. If you tin tomatoes as an example, there is a thermodynamic cost of processing, pasteurisation and canning. To charge your phone is to gain time value but it also liberates you from a power socket, but there is of course, a cost to the portability (storage) of that energy. The benefit is always future availability - even in the example given here where availability is effectively being traded. Same can be said for refrigeration, drying foods, or converting electricity to hydrogen etc... I talk about that in a four part series but here is last part for anyone who is interested. https://open.substack.com/pub/michaelvigne/p/why-we-tin-tomatoes?r=2bzb33&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
I’m pretty sure the Globalist Fascist Oligarchy don’t believe in a “money refrigerator.” Their goal is to depopulate the planet down to 500 million serfs, according to the old Georgia Guidestones and Yuval Harari at the WEF.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia_Guidestones
https://intelligiblenoise.substack.com/p/world-economic-forum-admits-that