March 2019
Intermediate to advanced
636 pages
27h 50m
English
Consider the case of music. One hundred years ago, it would have been recorded on bakelite, and then through a series of technological innovations, it moved to vinyl, Compact Disc, digital mini-disc. Each step was cheaper than the previous, and of higher quality. But, about 25 years ago, something different happened! The first MP3 format was introduced to support high-fidelity audio capture.
This was the de-materialization step, and it was quite different to the other steps. Yes, it was cheaper, and of higher quality, but critically it stopped music having a physical representation. This de-materialization pattern is increasingly common—financial products such as bonds, securities, swaps, mortgages, and ...
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