Doug Rushkoff had set out, as he told me in an interview on the WELL, to write one kind of book -- "about money as a medium, and the way centralized currency and corporate capitalism were accepted as given circumstances of business, rather than inventions of particular people at a particular time."

Rushkoff, who's made a living as a writer, thinker and speaker who tries to step outside culture and see more clearly the patterns and processes at work, was ready to question fundamental assumptions about money and economies, and look for solutions to problems we all sense but barely understand -- cycles of boom and bust, polarization of economic and political thinking (which are inherently linked), and how commitment to abstract concepts can make humans less human. Also how people can unthinkingly (or other-thinkingly) accept and follow cultural notions that actually undermine sustainable futures.