EP47 Mark Burgess on the Physics of Money



Mark Burgess talks with Jim about money through the promise theory lense — banks, debt, interest, deflation, stockpiling, entropy, crypto, and much more…

Mark Burgess

Author, founder & scientist Mark Burgess talks with Jim about promise theory, the many functions of money, its network transfer & physical components, spacetime’s connection to money’s ability to store value, the role of banks, memory & debt, interest & the logic of never-ending growth, deflation & negative interest rates, micro vs macro perspectives on money, geopolitics & foreign exchange, monetary velocity & impacts of stockpiling, currency demurrage, entropy in money, trust, the emerging monetary system in China, Mark’s views on cryptocurrencies & smart contracts, how he sees the future of work & DevOps being connected to money, and more.

Episode Transcript

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Mark Burgess is a theoretician and practitioner in the area of information systems, whose work has focused largely on distributed information infrastructure. He is known particularly for his work on Configuration Management and Promise Theory. He was the principal Founder of CFEngine, ChiTek-i, and now co-founder and chief innovation officer at Aljabr Inc.

Mark is emeritus professor of Network and System Administration from Oslo University College. He is the author of numerous books, articles, and papers on topics from physics, Network and System Administration, to fiction. He also writes a blog on issues of science and IT industry concerns. Today, he works as an advisor on science and technology matters all over the world.