麻豆传媒

WHAT may well be the by archaeologists at an ancient abandoned city known as Guanzhuang in China. Made of a bronze alloy, the coins were discovered in a well-preserved mint 鈥� complete with moulds and other tools 鈥� and carbon-dated to between 550 and 640 BC.

Like many Bronze Age coins from the region, they were cast in the shape of 14-centimetre-long spades, their stylised shovel blades attached to carefully crafted hollow handles. These ancient coins existed during a transitional period between barter and money, when coins were a novel concept, but everybody knew that agricultural tools were valuable.

Reading about this incredible discovery in the journal , I kept thinking about the way modern people represent computer networks by describing machines as having 鈥渁ddresses鈥�, like a house. We also talk about one computer using a 鈥減ort鈥� to send information to another computer, as if the data were a wee boat floating on the sea of electrons to reach its destination. It鈥檚 as if we are in the Bronze Age of information technology, grasping desperately for real-world analogies that will help us grasp a concept that has barely begun to transform our civilisations.

Think of spade coins as the economic equivalent of computers that have 鈥渨indows鈥� and 鈥渇olders鈥� and all kinds of other silly things from the physical world that have nothing to do with what the computer is actually doing. Now consider what happened to the spade coin. Over centuries, metalworkers made these pieces of bronze into more abstract shapes. Some became almost humanoid figures, the shovel converted into two flat, rectangular legs topped by a square head. Other spades morphed into vaguely crescent shapes, their handles reduced to small half-circles. Eventually, most ancient coins in China had boreholes in the 鈥渉andles鈥�, perhaps so that people could carry them on a loop of twine.

As spade coins grew more abstract, people inscribed them with number values, the names of clans who issued them and the locations where they were forged. They became more like modern coins, flat and covered in writing. Looking at one of these later pieces, forged almost 800 years after the artisans of Guanzhuang crafted the first coins with clay moulds, you would have no idea that they were once intended to look like a spade. Money, in other words, had a historical arc. At the dawn of monetary systems and economics, it wasn鈥檛 an abstract thing. Centuries passed before those spades became blobs of data for measuring value.

鈥淚f climate change leads to a return to semi-nomadic life, our mobile devices might resemble boats not phones鈥�

This makes me wonder when we will stop needing to describe computer networks by referring to addresses and ports. Will we ever stop talking about files, folders and trash cans on our desktops? Or will we develop an entirely new set of symbols that allow us to interact with our digital information more smoothly?

Taking spade coins as our guide, we can speculate that far-future computer networks will no longer contain any recognisable references to houses and water transit. But they still might conjure up some of the ideas we associate with home. In fact, computer networks 鈥� if they still exist at all 鈥� are likely to be almost indistinguishable from our houses and cities, their sensors woven into walls and roads. Our network addresses might actually be the same as our street addresses. If climate change leads to floods, mass migrations and a return to semi-nomadic life, our mobile devices might look more like boats than phones. Docking at a port really will require us to have the proper data protocols as well as the right kind of anchor.

My point is that the metaphors of the information age aren鈥檛 random. We have adopted terms like 鈥渉ome screen鈥� because our glassy slabs of data sometimes do offer the comfort of an easy chair after a long day at work. In some sense, we aspire to settle on the shores of data lakes 鈥� and to defend our intangible property with weaponised memes shot through optical fibres beneath the sea. Ultimately, this desire could change the way we understand home, as well as how we build computers.

Imagine trying to explain the stock market and cryptocurrency to one of those Guanzhuang bronze workers, forging spade coins back in the 7th century BC. We would share an understanding of money and value, and we would recognise the importance of spades. But we have about 20 layers of abstraction piled on top of that original, much-needed spade. So as we cast our minds forward, we have to think about what new abstractions will adhere to our information technology. Perhaps the one thing we can count on is that humans will still appreciate the comforts of home.