IPV4 is running out of internet addresses. It is 32 bit which gives 2 to the power of 32 address spaces. IPV6 is the new standard which will give 2 to the 128 power addresses. Is power the right word, since I can't write the number in super-script but you know what I mean. Maybe it is the exponent?
I don't usually think in such big numbers so I had to write it out to see all the zeros. The big numbers I was dealing with are not all that big. In my fantasy money system all money would be uniquely serialized and denominated as one serialized digital dollar on a server at Ft. Knox. It would be a fixed recored with a relationship to an owner. The owner's name would change with transactions. The server's record mirrored and always in sync with the client's iPod, just like iTumes.
Apple has some interesting patents on iWallet that makes me wonder how they would apply the patents but it seems to be apparent intentions.
There seem to be $1.8 trillion dollars (how much it really is, now that is a good question, I don't really know the answer) that is the stock of money used at a medium of exchange in day to day money transactions. This is M0 or high powered money in circulation with which we transact our daily money business to buy and sell stuff amounting to about $15 trillion per year GNP and Gross National Consumption per year, plus and minus some adjustments.
We view it as money in our account somewhere, or pocket and mattress if we use only cash. An account is the same way the banks look it it, because that is how they looked at it in the green eye shade days of banking. Computers can look at money as uniquely serialized digital one dollar bills. Why? I will go out on a limb here and simply say that I think that in the world of science, reducing anything to its smallest unit of composition gives more information and management ability. That is an advantage when we do not seem to know much about or be a able to manage macro adequately to the benefit of society but much to the benefit of narrow, sub-optized financial self interest.
It is just a matter of user view. We like to look at our money as an aggregate of dollars in a unique account. The computer would like to efficiently structure money as a unique serialized entity that has an association to a unique financial entity with the ability to increase or decrease the number of uniquely serialized one dollar bills associated with ownership that is variable as a function of transactions in the medium of exchange. Its working cash on hand either way of looking at it. It is just a user view but the real structure of information is probably best to built on the fundamental unit of one serialized dollar.
So, trillions of dollars in circulation and their associated volume of transactions is not a big problem for computers. The fact is that computers are doing it all today. Probably with a great amount of redundancy in the current system and certainly failing to collect all the economic information that is potentially available if money itself is at a more finely granular level. The level where every dollar is serialized.
Theoretically every penny could be serialized but some kind of a "small change" system to handle the fractions of a dollar would be more efficient to reduce the overhead of storage and communication.
On the other hand…..Maybe every penny could be serialized. That is where it gets into big numbers. Big numbers are relative.
Yottabytes gives a whole new meaning to me about the relative scale of magnitude that a computer can handle. I ran across this term, yottabytes, today int he is story about what the NSA is building in Utah.
Yottabyes is a lotta bytes!!
No comments:
Post a Comment