Putting people back in the picture.

We don't know why, twenty thousand years ago, our predecessors painted cave walls. It was a global phenomenon, and there are many theories but no real consensus. 

What was painted was clearly important to our ancestors, but why? The paintings are not of what we believe they ate, nor are there any detailed paintings of people, so what was in their minds as they painted them? 

Roll forward twenty thousand years from today, and whoever is around then might wonder the same about our relationship with money and data. They have a similarly detached relationship with people, who, like the ancient ones on paintings, exist only in outline at the edge of the picture. 

We know, but like to forget, that the money we use to represent stored value is a mutually agreed fiction with no substance other than the stories we tell ourselves about it. Yet, there it is, centre stage in today's expensively built shiny caves. Whenever we have a problem, in the NHS, or Education or something else involving people…