Chapter 5. Telematics.

1. Definitions.

The word telematics is starting to be used currently in all the mass media in our country.

It has been formed by merging two ideas, more familiar, of telecommunication and data processing. We can then define telematics as the «distance communication (= telecommunication) of codified information processed according to logic (=data processing)».

Data processing is a very sophisticated system of handling inforamtion which brings into play, fundamentally, three elements:

Through the combination of data processing with telecommunications -that is, the technologies of distance communications, circulation and distribution of information: telegraph, telephone, radio, television, video,...- telematics is born, which is the possibility of connecting among them several data processing centres, scattered in space, so that they may transmit among themselves the information stored or worked out by each one of them.

Through the combination of data processing with the technologies of retroactive control, cybernetics is born, which is just the possibility for the computer to continuously modify its own performance, by comparison between the programme and the results which are being obtained.

2. Which information?

Data processing is the processing of information. But, which information are we talking about? can any information be submitted to data processing? No. It can only be the information which refers to «scientifically» analyzable phenomena. Only the information which can be systematized, formalized, which can be expressed according to conventional rules or to «scientific» laws, can be the object of data processing.

Because the data processing programmes are logical, they are a number of formal operations to be carried out on informative units. And it makes no sense to submit to logical operations all that depends from human free imagination, creativity, intuition, and which, therefore, is not submitted to any system nor any law, and even less to any logic -which is the strictest of the concentration camps-.

In a word: all that is not the object of «science», is not the object of data processing either. A computer cannot give results nor answers concerning ethical, moral, political, esthetic... problems. It can only help man to solve the problems having their source in the field of phenomena which are the object of «science», because in this field it only repeats and imitates the outlines of the logic thought in man, and to carry them out. And when it carries them out it does so with great speed and precision, thereby sparing man from having to carry out very long and troublesome calculations and mental operations.

This speed and precision are the great advantage and usefulness of data processing; and even if its field of application is rigidly outlined, the final result is that man has a highly perfected instrument of analysis of the phenomenal reality which allows him, later, to take his free ethical, political, esthetic options and decisions of great responsibility, on the basis of a knowledge of phenomena much more complete and improved.

3. Applications.

Not because it is narrowly defined is the application field of the data processing technology more reduced. On the contrary, its use gets on more and more through a great number of domains and tasks, to the extent that it becomes a real social revolution.

From the programmes for teaching and research and up to robotics (or robotization of production, that is industrial production carried out by robots, machines with an electronic brain) and to bureautics (automation of office tasks and cores), going through video, video-text, electronic games or the personal minicomputers, which lure the great public, there exist many and many practical applications of data processing and of telematics, and many more are still to be invented.

On the other hand, the quick technologic progress causes a progressive miniaturization of appliances, their constant reduction in price, and the working out of new man-machine languages (which must not be confused with the machine-language previously mentioned) which become closer to the human language -all these things to a great extent make the use of this technology easier-.

4. The telematic market.

But what we are interested in especially now is the possibility of applying telematics to the shaping of a new monetary system.

This is no piece of news, since everybody has heard about electronic money or electronic payments. The comprehensive name of monetics is also being used.

Now, the different initiatives which are already on the move in this respect in different countries, also in ours, do not fall within the context of a theoretical reflection on the monetary system and its social function. We want to put right this fundamental deficiency, which is also very dangerous.

In the previous chapter we have described the cheque-invoice, the monetary instrument we suggest as an alternative to the irrational monetary instruments in force. We shall now see how to put in practice this cheque-invoice with the help of telematics, that is, of the pro-telematic cheque-invoice. The great possibilities of telematics cause this technology to be perfectly suited to the needs and features of the cheque-invoice.

Pro-telematic cheque-invoice means simply that every cheque-invoice issued will be so through a centralized telematic system. To develop this system is, from a technological point of view, the easiest thing.

This telematic system should cover the following elements:

The market reality which will derive from the radical suppression of the present monetary instruments, and their substitution by the telematic monetary network we have just described, is called telematic market. In the telematic market, each elementary operation is fully documented: there is therefore a total transparency of the market, a thorough information on it, which, if made available to all the population -and not only to a privileged sector of it- is an inexhaustible source of greater wealth, freedom and ability to act with intelligence and effectiveness.

The same could be said of the telematic society, or number of social-monetary acts inside the telematic network of cheque-invoices.

5. Monetary dematerialization.

With the telematic monetary network and the pro-telematic cheque-invoice a great dematerialization of the monetary system is attained, which shows very clearly its lack of any intrinsic value, and its purely instrumental-abstract nature.

The purchasing power of each person will be made up simply by a figure in his current account.

This purchasing power will be started only by the issuing of a pro-telematic cheque-invoice: the ensuing recording of data is automatic through the computer.

The cheque-invoice, being a piece of paper, is the most material part of the suggested monetary system, and it might even be suppressed and substituted by a magnetic memory which would be printed directly in the customer's card and in the telematic network of the accounting centres (banks).

6. The present alternative.

Whether we like it or not, the fact is that the telematic market will be a reality in a very few years.

In some parts of our country there are already electronic payment cards. In other countries, especially in Japan, this system is already widespread.

However, if we consider how this is being done at present, the conversion of the monetary system to telematics will not be total, but will be done parallel to the present system. The anonymous monetary instruments in force will not be suppressed radically as we have suggested, but they will be held side by side with the personalized telematic monetary instruments: in this way it will always be possible to go from one sort of monetary circulation to the other. And so it will be impossible to obtain a total imperial accounting, and it will be impossible to attain an effective personalization and responsibilization of the monetary acts, in anticipation of the disappearance of corruption for money. All the goals we have assigned to the pro-telematic cheque-invoice will be in principle unattainable; there will have been technical progress, but social progress will be naught.

We therefore suggest the complete telematization of the monetary system. That this need not imply the absolute control of the State over citizens we shall try to demonstrate in the following chapters.