Toby on Capitalism and Arithmetic

The story starts with Leonardo Bonacci,...

Then within a relatively short period there sprang up a whole teaching industry,...

This is what triggered my tirade: Distributed Multi-Player Games. 

That change from wire-frame abacii to algorism is like going from using Microsoft Excel spreadsheets to...  Something that hasn't been invented yet. See Saleh Kayyali on Spreadsheet UI Design. It allowed people to verify calculations independently and thereby settle disputes rationally. We don't have that ability with modern computing systems which all rely on concrete representation, like beads in a wire. See Defensive Security and Olive Badger. 

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