Perhaps not hackerish, but beautiful design work. Nicest money I've seen since the Dutch guilder went out of circulation. One small change i'd made (for blind people) is to have the notes slightly different sizes. This is the norm in Europe and it works fine, without hindering ATM machines when depositing cash.
Not to derail the thread, but I believe this has as much to do with hacking as most stuff on Hacker News. It's unfortunate the term doesn't extend to Designers going beyond the minimum required by their profession because I believe they have the same curiosity and spirit that drives extraordinary programmers to become "hackers". After all, the guy just redesigned the American currency.
I don't like the idea of having money that has different sizes. I would prefer if the colored bar on the left had a different texture and each denominartion had a differently sized block of alternate texture. Then the blind could simply feel what the denomination was. Unless the braille on this actually works, that would be better.
When I clicked on the link I was hoping to find a article about cheap design...
Anyway, I like the designs and I really like the idea of using currency as a means of education (e.g. Bill of Rights, and branches of government on the bills.)
One thing I don't get though is this: "One thing I definitely don't want is the government deciding what cultural figures or movements are the most important or 'American.' Instead, I think the most important politicians should be on money." I'm not sure how you determine what political figures are on the bills without influence from the politicians in power.
It should also be noted that Benjamin Franklin was never an American president.
However, if the politicians featured are significantly old enough, they lose a lot of their political nature. Most people don't think about, say, Indian removal when using a $20 bill or suspension of habeas corpus when using a $5 bill. Assuming enough time has passed, the furor over certain decisions disappears because the winning decision becomes part of our culture. Slavery was a heavily divisive topic in the 1800s and Lincoln became a key figure on the anti-slavery side, but with enough time passed everyone (or at least a number dominant to the point that others are considered fringe) has become anti-slave.
Other countries put important scientific and cultural figures on their money. The Bank of England puts Darwin on its £10 note and is going to put Adam Smith on its £20. Why can't we do the same? Along with Ben Franklin we could have Herman Melville, Marian Anderson, Richard Feynman...
When I clicked the link my expectations lead me to believe this was some kind of re-evaluation for monetary exchange. This is a cute idea but I was expecting something bit more ambitious given the title.
These are some pretty nice-looking mockups, but the typography is going to need some work. Unless they count the clashing typefaces as an anti-counterfeiting measure...
Putting quotes from the Bill of Rights is pure propaganda. Money, in the U.S. is not issued by the government and has nothing to do with Presidents, the Constitution, or Bill of Rights.
These are Federal Reserve Notes, issued by the private, for-profit central bank. The only connection with our government are the federal legal tender laws that force citizens to accept these pieces of paper as "legal tender for all debts, public and private"
For a quote -- instead of something from the great Bill of Rights -- I'd love to see Woodrow Wilson's sad lament of his signing of the Federal Reserve Act. It would be much more appropriate.
"I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated Governments in the civilized world no longer a Government by free opinion, no longer a Government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a Government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men."
-- Woodrow Wilson
I like your idea, but sorting on insertion is O(log(N)), which is faster than searching an unordered list and just as fast as having different-sized bills.
I only meant for inserting one bill, so N is the number of bills you have already. Using a binary search on a sorted list, either to find a specific denomination you want or to find the correct spot for a new bill, is O(log(N)).
Going borderless like that is extraordinarily striking for US currency, but I bet that would be the first thing to go, as it's expensive to reliably print borderless designs in sheets and then cut them up, unless the designs tile perfectly.
That and other nitpicks aside, if these were our new dollar bills I'd be perfectly happy. They represent a great amount of boldness and brushing away stodginess while still being totally reverent to the heritage they're supposed to represent.
Because we don't. Americans might profess faith and appeal to the high heavens, but their actions are very unlike anyone who has faith in a higher power. Really spiritual people that have deep faiths are very non-calculating and resigned to the will of the higher being. Americans are very canny and selfish, very humane and materialistic qualities IMO. If you have paid any attention to the news at the height of the Iraqi civil war and fear of widespread regional conflict; with every news came a marketplace analysis of what the death and injury of people overseas might mean to the stock market. Even now, as America's economy stumbles, no one speaks of the poor, but everyone is busy nursing the wounds afflicted to their retirement funds and speculate what this means to their futures.
People who trust a higher power depend on said power to come to their aid, they don't stow away cash and grab real-estate properties, effectively hedging their bets against "God"'s will or betting on his mercy ;-)
I was trying to make a distinction between a belief in God vs having trust in him. Belief is what Americans have in spades. Trust? not so much. I cannot think of ONE nation-state that has trust in a higher power; perhaps maybe Bhutan, whose largely agricultural economy has been powered by chanting and prayer (as it has never developed enough to shift trust to man and his efforts.)
Appeals to "God" in the official American symbolisms and language are both throw-backs to history, which should be removed, and hypocrisy, as the system is run by Man, wholesale.
Maybe you take offense to my opinion, and you're the one who shouldn't be offended and/or take his thin skin elsewhere? It's sometimes healthier to detach yourself from the subject of a discussion, if you identify with it, at least long enough to understand the other :-)
This isn't a political or theological forum. If you want to know my personal opinion, I am an atheist, and I don't really care whether "In God We Trust" is on the currency or not.
I think my objection to your generalizations about Americans was fully justified. The US is an extremely diverse country, and trying to paint Americans as materialistic or less-holy-than-thou is really, well, stupid.
I think my objection to your generalizations about Americans was fully justified. The US is an extremely diverse country, and trying to paint Americans as materialistic or less-holy-than-thou is really, well, stupid.
"Nations" are composed of diverse individuals and groups, but they also have their unique, combined national identity[1]. I am not making sweeping generalizations about "Americans", I am taking their self-identification and their actions at face value and looking to see whether those words and actions are inline with the profession of "In God We Trust."
Everything, from the declaration of independence, to the conquest of the South/Western Mexican states, to becoming a sea-faring world power, to occupation of Philippines to the industrial revolution, mass immigration and everything. All the "American Dream" mythology, upward mobility, white-picket-fence and two-car-garage house, competition, excellence in sports, variously named "Generations" (an age-demographic category that has no other peer in the world) .. this is not exactly a defeatist nation that believes in predestination. No where in the this massive running engine that we call American daily life does God figure in; just look at the morning rush, when Americans go through the ritual of drive-through breakfast and traffic jams. That's an all too human pursuit of life, driven by selfish interests. And there is nothing wrong with it.
But it mocks one's intelligence to see these very people tack random trite quotes and slogans from their religious past onto their current everyday life. It would be honest of them to fucking come clean, or sit together in a massive group-therapy session to reflect on the disparity between their words and their actions. And I say that as a person who prefers their actions, over their phony appeal to scripted/printed moral aphorisms. Cut the judeo-christian faux-altruistic crap already.
--
[1] ignore for now existence of consensus on national-unity by all the alleged members/citizens.
While a lot of people in this discussion seem to like the design, I have to say that I don't like it. It feels unprofessional and looks like design for game money, or... Web 2.0 money? (I'm not talking about cultural thing, purely visual.)
While I understand that this is just an exercise/whatif/fun, it seems that these exercises favor the pretty over the functional. There are some niceties in the design, like the braille. But beyond that, fundamentally, currency should not be easily copied.
There doesn't seem there was much thought about that in the designs, other than the wavy web-like background. I think that would make for a much more interesting (to me at least) case study in design were that the case.
34 comments
[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 78.8 ms ] thread"I'd like a small pizza and a medium Coke."
"OK, [kaching] that'll be one search-and-seizure and one free-speech..."
Anyway, I like the designs and I really like the idea of using currency as a means of education (e.g. Bill of Rights, and branches of government on the bills.)
One thing I don't get though is this: "One thing I definitely don't want is the government deciding what cultural figures or movements are the most important or 'American.' Instead, I think the most important politicians should be on money." I'm not sure how you determine what political figures are on the bills without influence from the politicians in power.
However, if the politicians featured are significantly old enough, they lose a lot of their political nature. Most people don't think about, say, Indian removal when using a $20 bill or suspension of habeas corpus when using a $5 bill. Assuming enough time has passed, the furor over certain decisions disappears because the winning decision becomes part of our culture. Slavery was a heavily divisive topic in the 1800s and Lincoln became a key figure on the anti-slavery side, but with enough time passed everyone (or at least a number dominant to the point that others are considered fringe) has become anti-slave.
Putting quotes from the Bill of Rights is pure propaganda. Money, in the U.S. is not issued by the government and has nothing to do with Presidents, the Constitution, or Bill of Rights.
These are Federal Reserve Notes, issued by the private, for-profit central bank. The only connection with our government are the federal legal tender laws that force citizens to accept these pieces of paper as "legal tender for all debts, public and private"
For a quote -- instead of something from the great Bill of Rights -- I'd love to see Woodrow Wilson's sad lament of his signing of the Federal Reserve Act. It would be much more appropriate.
"I am a most unhappy man. I have unwittingly ruined my country. A great industrial nation is controlled by its system of credit. Our system of credit is concentrated. The growth of the nation, therefore, and all our activities are in the hands of a few men. We have come to be one of the worst ruled, one of the most completely controlled and dominated Governments in the civilized world no longer a Government by free opinion, no longer a Government by conviction and the vote of the majority, but a Government by the opinion and duress of a small group of dominant men." -- Woodrow Wilson
I live in Canada, the land of the debit card. It's rare for me to actually even carry cash anymore.
* Sorting is O(N) [see spaghetti sort: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaghetti_sort]
* Retrieval is O(1).
Further, retrieval is O(1) even in unordered sets, so sorting is irrelevant.
(Also, how is sorting on insertion O(log(N))? For each new bill, finding the correct spot is log(N), so you're still looking at O(N log(N)).)
Seriously, what's the point of a $1 note? To irritate people everywhere trying to feed them into vending machines?
That and other nitpicks aside, if these were our new dollar bills I'd be perfectly happy. They represent a great amount of boldness and brushing away stodginess while still being totally reverent to the heritage they're supposed to represent.
People who trust a higher power depend on said power to come to their aid, they don't stow away cash and grab real-estate properties, effectively hedging their bets against "God"'s will or betting on his mercy ;-)
Take your "O" somewhere else. This isn't the place for making borderline offensive generalizations about people's cultures.
Appeals to "God" in the official American symbolisms and language are both throw-backs to history, which should be removed, and hypocrisy, as the system is run by Man, wholesale.
Maybe you take offense to my opinion, and you're the one who shouldn't be offended and/or take his thin skin elsewhere? It's sometimes healthier to detach yourself from the subject of a discussion, if you identify with it, at least long enough to understand the other :-)
I think my objection to your generalizations about Americans was fully justified. The US is an extremely diverse country, and trying to paint Americans as materialistic or less-holy-than-thou is really, well, stupid.
"Nations" are composed of diverse individuals and groups, but they also have their unique, combined national identity[1]. I am not making sweeping generalizations about "Americans", I am taking their self-identification and their actions at face value and looking to see whether those words and actions are inline with the profession of "In God We Trust."
Everything, from the declaration of independence, to the conquest of the South/Western Mexican states, to becoming a sea-faring world power, to occupation of Philippines to the industrial revolution, mass immigration and everything. All the "American Dream" mythology, upward mobility, white-picket-fence and two-car-garage house, competition, excellence in sports, variously named "Generations" (an age-demographic category that has no other peer in the world) .. this is not exactly a defeatist nation that believes in predestination. No where in the this massive running engine that we call American daily life does God figure in; just look at the morning rush, when Americans go through the ritual of drive-through breakfast and traffic jams. That's an all too human pursuit of life, driven by selfish interests. And there is nothing wrong with it.
But it mocks one's intelligence to see these very people tack random trite quotes and slogans from their religious past onto their current everyday life. It would be honest of them to fucking come clean, or sit together in a massive group-therapy session to reflect on the disparity between their words and their actions. And I say that as a person who prefers their actions, over their phony appeal to scripted/printed moral aphorisms. Cut the judeo-christian faux-altruistic crap already.
--
[1] ignore for now existence of consensus on national-unity by all the alleged members/citizens.
I enjoyed talking to you, even though it felt like a monologue at times.
There doesn't seem there was much thought about that in the designs, other than the wavy web-like background. I think that would make for a much more interesting (to me at least) case study in design were that the case.