Author Event: David Wolman - The End of Money
David Wolman, author of
The End of Money
Wednesday, April 25th
6:30pm at Springhouse Cellars
Co-Sponsored by Gorge Owned Business Network
Waucoma Bookstore and Gorge Owned Business Network are hosting author David Wolman for an author reading and discussion at 6:30pm on Wednesday, April 25th at Springhouse cellars (13 Railroad St., Hood River). Wolman will be discussing his new book The End of Money.
About the Book
For ages, money has meant little metal disks and rectangular slips of paper. Yet the usefulness of physical money—to say nothing of its value—is coming under fire as never before. Intrigued by the distinct possibility that cash will soon disappear, author and Wired contributing editor David Wolman sets out to investigate the future of money…and how it will affect your wallet.
Wolman begins his journey by deciding to shun cash for an entire year—a surprisingly successful experiment (with a couple of notable exceptions). He then ventures forth to find people and technologies that illuminate the road ahead. In Honolulu, he drinks Mai Tais with Bernard von NotHaus, a convicted counterfeiter and alternative-currency evangelist whom government prosecutors have labeled a domestic terrorist. In Tokyo, he sneaks a peek at the latest anti-counterfeiting wizardry, while puzzling over the fact that banknote forgers depend on society's addiction to cash. In a downtrodden Oregon town, he mingles with obsessive coin collectors—the people who are supposed to love cash the most, yet don't. And in rural Georgia, he examines why some people feel the end of cash is Armageddon’s warm-up act. After stops at the Digital Money Forum in London and Iceland’s central bank, Wolman flies to Delhi, where he sees first-hand how cash penalizes the poor more than anyone—and how mobile technologies promise to change that.
Told with verve and wit, The End of Money explores an aspect of our daily lives so fundamental that we rarely stop to think about it. You’ll never look at a dollar bill the same again.
David on The Alyona Show
About the Author
David Wolman is a contributing editor at Wired and the author of four books. He has written for publications including Outside, Mother Jones, Newsweek, Discover, Forbes, and Salon, and his work appeared in "Best American Science Writing 2009." A former Fulbright journalism fellow in Japan and a graduate of Stanford University's journalism program, he now lives in Portland, Oregon, where he received a 2011 Oregon Arts Commission Individual Artist Fellowship.
Wolman's 2008 story about activists in Egypt using Facebook to mobilize against the regime was one of the earliest pieces of long-form journalism about what would come to be known as the Arab Spring. He followed that up with an e-book, "The Instigators," published by The Atavist in May, 2011.
His first book, "A Left-Hand Turn Around the World," was published by Da Capo Press (hardcover 2005, paperback 2006). "Righting the Mother Tongue: From Olde English to Email," was published by HarperCollins (hardcover 2008, paperback 2009). His latest book, "The End of Money," will be published by Da Capo Press in February, 2012. In it, he takes a critical look at cash, considering its liabilities and what our world would be like without those trillions of little numbered bits of paper and tiny metal disks.
