What is money?

Over the past few years I have blogged about mathematical risk models (on my work blog) and the nature of reality (on my home blog). I'm becoming interested in a new question:

What is money?
Does that answer work??

Nope, it's not that kind of question.

So why am I interested in the nature of money?

A number of my posts have had connections to World War II. Examples: Herman Wouk, Albert Einstein, Richard Feynman (worked on the Manhattan Project), the play Copenhagen (about an event that took place during World War II).

I've blogged about two economists who famously debated the causes and cures of the Great Depression, which immediately preceded World War II and was at least a contributory cause of it. (here, here, here) I've written perhaps a dozen posts on my work blog about the recent financial crisis of our own time; let's hope it doesn't have the same ending as the Great Depression!

So that's why I'm interested in the nature of money. It seems that issues about our understanding of money can have big consequences.

A few places I plan to go with this question:

While blogging about the nature of reality, I wrote about some interesting ideas of Douglas Adams and Jaron Lanier. The works by Adams and Lanier that I cited in those posts also include interesting ideas about money. I intend to revisit those ideas.

I recently discovered that John Nash has some thoughts about money. You may recall John Nash from the movie A Beautiful Mind. I hope to explore his ideas.

Finally, I recently attended a Slow Money National Gathering. I'm not sure if all of their ideas are "sustainable" or not, but I did find parts of Woody Tasch's book interesting. I'll blog about it sometime.

In any event, this post is not about any new ideas. This post is a request for interesting links. In the past, when I was blogging about mathematical risk models or the nature of reality, some of the readers of my blogs sent me links to interesting articles, books and videos (and cartoons!) that I would not have found otherwise. So if you encounter any interesting links about the nature of money, please send them along. Thank you.