I'd say there's something fascinating about that sight of nonchalant, easy payment. Just a short touch of the so-called screen. smartphone with the point of contact of the payment machine. Although such a ritual is only a small step forward compared to the classic ironing of the card and the archaic typing of the four-digit code, it is as if with this shift the practice of payment gained some additional dimension, in the direction of a kind of relief, relaxation, almost disinterestedness.
For some time now, sometimes, in certain situations, I discreetly monitor the level of concentration of payers, in terms of the attention they (don't) pay to the amount/figure that is on the device they scan when paying for products or services. To put it bluntly, ad hoc, I have the impression that such attention decreases or increases, depending on whether the customers are younger or older. Therefore, the generational variable, where spontaneity in contact with technology is of course also an important factor.
However, it is unusual considering the content of such an act. After all, it is about our money, and few people are immune to that, whether they are younger or older, richer or poorer, more or less technologically savvy. Although the economic-political aspect is crucial and determining in this case as well - in the shortest and simplest terms, we usually do not think, nor are we too interested, that banks take an almost invisible amount individually from each such transaction, but cumulatively it is an unimaginable amount of money - something else bothers me on the described trail this time is interesting. And that is a kind of screaming discrepancy.
On the one hand, there are the pain, usually not very simple methods and the time that the vast majority of people need to get hold of those figures, which serve as markers for money in the bank account. On the other side is the symbolism of the mentioned ritual, a light movement of the hand, a simple soft touch, some kind of perverse kiss between the screen and the screen, and a certain amount is instantly, in a second, transferred to another account, to someone else. Gone, estranged from us. Or more simply, in the style of folk wisdom, it is so difficult and slow to earn, and so easy and fast to spend.
What is certain is that the long history of the dematerialization of money played an important role in the anthropological sense as well. Because it is one thing to create, to acquire a relationship with money - which in every version is a transformed commodity - as a material artifact, a silver coin, a gold coin or a paper bill. Then the power of money as a fetish is very pronounced and important. But the second is the virtual experience of money as a number on the screen that constantly changes, falls and rises. With the market of digital cryptocurrencies, such a trend is exponentially amplified. This is historically the youngest confirmation of that classic Marx formula, that NRN (money-goods-money) is ultimately always reduced to NN, money that is exchanged for money, that is, money is produced.
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