the Pegman Coin
Amazon has just launched its own currency: the Amazon coin. The Microtruc collective would also like to launch a new currency: the Pegman coin. The Pegman coin, or Peg coin, is an alternative exchange currency. The Pegman coin comes in the shape of a little metal man, inspired by the Pegman on Google Street View. Just like Google’s Pegman, he is destined to travel around the world. We wish to circulate him as a real exchange currency. At launch time, 5 baguettes of bread will be equal to 1 Pegman coin. The Peg coin is a way of thumbing our nose at Google and at all big companies that are trying to expand and increase profits by taking control of the digital economy. As represented by a little man, the Peg coin reminds us that the digital world, sometimes perceived as dematerialized, has a big influence on the real lives of men and women. Reappropriating this symbol of the Internet and circulating it among good hands is a way of elevating our everyday lives beyond the digital cash cow.
Often without even knowing it, we provide a significant amount of personal data to companies such as Google. These data have value; in return, this data can be materialized into Peg Coins.
Although he is now commonplace, this peg man born in Mountain View has apparently been discarded by Google—he doesn’t appear in the new interface.
So if Google has let him go, perhaps it’s precisely because this character had something of the animated GIF, a crafty little something of the beginnings of the Web, too easy to hack, too easy to transform!
Thanks to a Kiss Kiss Bank Bank* collection, the first 1600 zamak Pegman Coins were produced at Fonderie Roger - www.fonderieroger.fr
(*) www.kisskissbankbank.com/pegman-coin
2013 – Microtruc (Caroline Delieutraz, Julien Levesque et Albertine Meunier)
