Thank you for downloading this episode of A History of the World in 100 Objects from BBC Radio 4.
If you asked anyone which 20th century invention
had most impact on our daily lives today,
instant answers might include the mobile phone or the personal computer.
I suspect not many people would think first
of the little plastic rectangles that fill our wallets and purses.
Yet since they emerged in the late 1950s,
credit cards have become in every sense part of the currency of life.
Bank credit is now for the first time in history
no longer the prerogative of the elite.
And maybe as a result, the long-dormant religious and ethical debate
about the use and abuse of money has been reborn
in the face of this ultimate symbol of triumphant consumer culture.
Today’s object, our penultimate in this history of the world through things,
is indeed a credit card.
But it’s a slightly unusual one and it leads us
to a perhaps unexpected conclusion about the way our world now behaves and believes.
If everyone were able to make every transaction through a credit card,
then would you actually need money in the conventional sense at all?
A History of the World in 100 Objects.