Unlike his non-fiction sources, Michael Frayn has dramatic licence to invent exchanges and even physical details which focus attention on the issues at stake here.
He (or she, or they) claimed to have invented a financial exchange system that could be rigorously enforced by mathematical algorithm and therefore operate "without relying on trust".
Slovo told the London audience that, since Supreme Court deliberations are not minuted or otherwise recorded, it had been necessary to invent the exchanges leading up to the historic verdict by a group of judges whose average at the time was north of 70.
Traditions are invented, repeated, discarded, exchanged, revived.
"The concept of counter-current heat exchange was invented in fish long before we thought of it".
The dollar, or any fiat money, as economists call paper currency, has one overwhelming virtue: It is efficient; far more efficient and convenient than any other method of exchange ever invented.
However, the independence of commerce was greatly enhanced when, during the medieval period, Jews responded to persecution and the seizure of their property by inventing letters of exchange.
Central to the story is the idea of change, feared and opposed by the dominant class, but also opportunistically embraced by those willing to re-invent themselves in exchange for a slice of new power.
There were no book reviews in 1709 (the book review was invented around 1750) and this exchange is as close as American letters gets, that year, to a back-and-forth.
The silly ones either wanted to reduce the entire brouhaha to "who invented hummus" or confused cultural exchange and sharing with outright appropriation.
Because despite its gilded reputation, it is full of renters and working folk--people who apparently do not mind living cheek-to-jowl in domiciles the word shanty was invented to describe, all in exchange for the privilege of being able to gaze out the window at one of the most magnificent natural tranquilizers the world has to offer: the rolling, hypnotically beautiful Pacific Ocean.
