Money loosed change upon the world.

It was the original social technology on which our civilization was built, turning value into a symbolic language that moves easily across space, time and culture. Money is the air we breathe. It surrounds us and permeates so much of our daily lives that we take for granted that it’s really just an idea some proto-tech bros invented five thousand years ago.

That is the key idea behind MarketWatch’s “Best New Ideas in Money” series.

Money is a mirror: a reflection of who we are, and what we value as a society. But money isn’t fixed. It continues to evolve. Think about the transformation wrought by the advent of insurance, bonds, stocks, mortgages, the Dow DJIA, +0.14% , credit cards and scratch-off lottery tickets.

In this series we explore the next phase of money’s evolution, examining through 12 ideas the current potential to rethink money, upgrade its operating system and unlock exciting new possibilities.

The stories cover not only financial-technology, or “fintech,” innovations such as mobile payments and cryptocurrencies but new thinking around how we measure the economy, how we fund medical research and higher education, and how we save, borrow and invest.

In selecting which new ideas to highlight, we tried to avoid pure speculation and pie-in-the-sky futurism, focusing instead on concepts that are already showing promise.

The “Best New Ideas in Money” articles will appear throughout October. Let us know what you think, and what you think we missed.

And the next time someone says it’s naïve to think an idea can change the world, tell them: “Nonsense. We’ve all got a little change in our pockets.”

Here are the stories:

1. Andrea Riquier: “How a financial innovation could find a cure for blindness”

2. Emma Court: “How changing the way we pay for health care could save money and lives”

3. Richard Eisenberg: “The ‘sidecar’ plan that could soon be attached to your 401(k)”

4. Rex Nutting: “To boost the economy, let’s first change how we measure the economy”

Peter Grundy

5. Jonathan Burton: “The case for paying every American a dividend on the nation’s wealth”

Peter Grundy

6. William Watts: “The next frontier in investing is ‘quantamental’ stock picking”

Peter Grundy

7. Aaron Hankin: “This is where cryptocurrencies are actually making a difference in the world”

Peter Grundy

8. Alessandra Malito: “Don’t have a 401(k)? State governments have a retirement plan for you”

Peter Grundy

9. Jillian Berman: “Here’s what it would take to make college tuition-free”

Peter Grundy

10. Emily Bary: “AI-based credit scores will soon give one billion people access to banking services”

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11. Kari Paul: “Americans’ data is worth billions — and you soon might be able to get a cut of it”

Peter Grundy

12. Maria LaMagna: “The end of the two-week pay cycle: How every day can be payday”

Peter Grundy

13. Philip Fernbach and Abigail Sussman: “Financial education flunks out — and here’s what’s being done about it”

Peter Grundy

Jeremy Olshan is the editor-in-chief of MarketWatch.