186
AdAptAtion in the Age of MediA ConvergenCe
“[s]tandardization allows money to be a unit of account and durability”
which makes it particularly amenable to use as a medium of exchange. 20
Moreover, quoting Simmel, Taylor concludes that money is “the condition
of possibility of a structure” and therefore “must retain a certain neutrality
that, in Shimmel’s [sic] terms, is “completely adaptable to any use. As a
result of this neutrality money can take many forms; it is, in other words,
polymorphous, polyvalent, and, some would insist, perverse.” 21 In other
words, if I may gloss both Simmel and Taylor, money “legofies” our lifeworlds by collapsing difference and rendering all things commensurate
and exchangeable, just as a building, scene, or person may be rendered in
identical, interchangeable LEGO bricks. 22
In the current, neoliberal capitalist paradigm, money shapes our
lifeworlds perhaps somewhat more openly and profoundly than it has
at any juncture in the past. While there are many reasons as to why this
might be the case, probably the most salient is the progressive deregulation of the market over the past several decades, which has entailed the
lifting of restrictions concerning what constitutes ethical trading practice
and what banks are able to do. One of the consequences of banks and
lending institutions becoming ever freer to self-regulate is a tremendous
shift from the backing of solid assets in favor of using money to create
more money through the development of various instruments of credit,
exposure to risk and numerous trade mechanisms, all of which have
led to what Randy Martin famously called the f inancialization of daily
life. Moreover, with the growing importance of f inance capitalism and
the economic developments that I just noted, the role of large corporations has also changed so that, where they were once “chartered to serve
both their shareholders and society as a whole” including employees
20 Mark C. Taylor, Confidence Games: Money and Markets in a World without Redemption
(Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2004), 59.
21 Taylor, 60; Simmel, 441.
22 It would be interesting to connect LEGO, which got its start in 1932, to many cultural
and economic developments typical of “modernism” and “structuralism,” of which Simmel’s
thought is representative. Such a study would take into account the early days of the science
of management and Max Weber’s notions concerning “the administered” world, Saussure’s
model of the signifier, and architectural modernism of which Frank Lloyd Wright, who played
with an early German construction toy called Froebel Blocks, is the vanguard. His mother
purchased the bricks at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia 1876, and Wright wrote in his
autobiography “the maple wood blocks […] are in my fingers to this day. These primary forms
and figures were the secret of all effects […], which were ever got into the architecture of the
world” ( J. Froebel-Parker “The Influence of Friedrich Froebel on Frank Lloyd Wright,” Froebel
Web: An Online Resource, accessed March 4, 2016, www.froebelweb.org/web2000.html).
AdAptAtion in the Age of MediA ConvergenCe
“[s]tandardization allows money to be a unit of account and durability”
which makes it particularly amenable to use as a medium of exchange. 20
Moreover, quoting Simmel, Taylor concludes that money is “the condition
of possibility of a structure” and therefore “must retain a certain neutrality
that, in Shimmel’s [sic] terms, is “completely adaptable to any use. As a
result of this neutrality money can take many forms; it is, in other words,
polymorphous, polyvalent, and, some would insist, perverse.” 21 In other
words, if I may gloss both Simmel and Taylor, money “legofies” our lifeworlds by collapsing difference and rendering all things commensurate
and exchangeable, just as a building, scene, or person may be rendered in
identical, interchangeable LEGO bricks. 22
In the current, neoliberal capitalist paradigm, money shapes our
lifeworlds perhaps somewhat more openly and profoundly than it has
at any juncture in the past. While there are many reasons as to why this
might be the case, probably the most salient is the progressive deregulation of the market over the past several decades, which has entailed the
lifting of restrictions concerning what constitutes ethical trading practice
and what banks are able to do. One of the consequences of banks and
lending institutions becoming ever freer to self-regulate is a tremendous
shift from the backing of solid assets in favor of using money to create
more money through the development of various instruments of credit,
exposure to risk and numerous trade mechanisms, all of which have
led to what Randy Martin famously called the f inancialization of daily
life. Moreover, with the growing importance of f inance capitalism and
the economic developments that I just noted, the role of large corporations has also changed so that, where they were once “chartered to serve
both their shareholders and society as a whole” including employees
20 Mark C. Taylor, Confidence Games: Money and Markets in a World without Redemption
(Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2004), 59.
21 Taylor, 60; Simmel, 441.
22 It would be interesting to connect LEGO, which got its start in 1932, to many cultural
and economic developments typical of “modernism” and “structuralism,” of which Simmel’s
thought is representative. Such a study would take into account the early days of the science
of management and Max Weber’s notions concerning “the administered” world, Saussure’s
model of the signifier, and architectural modernism of which Frank Lloyd Wright, who played
with an early German construction toy called Froebel Blocks, is the vanguard. His mother
purchased the bricks at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia 1876, and Wright wrote in his
autobiography “the maple wood blocks […] are in my fingers to this day. These primary forms
and figures were the secret of all effects […], which were ever got into the architecture of the
world” ( J. Froebel-Parker “The Influence of Friedrich Froebel on Frank Lloyd Wright,” Froebel
Web: An Online Resource, accessed March 4, 2016, www.froebelweb.org/web2000.html).