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}}The [[Blockchain]]’s unique selling point is ''[[uniqueness]]'': an entry on the ledger is fixed, immutable, unalterable and unique for all time. It cannot be changed, without editing every node on the [[distributed ledger]], and it cannot be duplicated.  This sense of uniqueness, which is encoded into the design of a [[distributed ledger]], quite alien to the engineering of the internet, which depends on duplication as a means of transmission.   
}}The [[Blockchain]]’s unique selling point is ''uniqueness'': an entry on the ledger is fixed, immutable, unalterable and unique for all time. It cannot be changed, without editing every node on the [[distributed ledger]], and it cannot be duplicated.  This sense of uniqueness, which is encoded into the design of a [[distributed ledger]], quite alien to the engineering of the internet, which depends on duplication as a means of transmission.   


The internet not only allows, but ''encourages'' lossless copying: that’s the essence of its [[End-to-end principle|end-to-end]] architecture. This brought to a head a conundrum for [[intellectual property]] laws that had been brewing since, arguably the time of the Jacquard loom. The idea of “intellectual property” was forged in an analog age, where the distinction between an ''original'' and a ''copy'' was clear and [[Ontology|ontologically]] fundamental. Also, the cost of generating copies was non-trivial and did not easily [[scale]]: since intellectual property was necessarily embedded in a physical [[substrate]] — to read a novel you needed a physical book — you could treat [[intellectual property]] as if it ''were'' physical property. To all intents, it ''was''.   
The internet not only allows, but ''encourages'' lossless copying: that’s the essence of its [[End-to-end principle|end-to-end]] architecture. This brought to a head a conundrum for [[intellectual property]] laws that had been brewing since, arguably the time of the [[Jacquard loom]]. The idea of “intellectual property” was forged in an analog age, where the distinction between an ''original'' and a ''copy'' was clear and [[Ontology|ontologically]] fundamental. Also, the cost of generating copies was non-trivial and did not easily [[scale]]: since intellectual property was necessarily embedded in a physical [[substrate]] — to read a novel you needed a physical book — you could treat [[intellectual property]] as if it ''were'' physical property. To all intents, it ''was''.   


But physical property is “[[res extensa]]”; [[intellectual property]] is “[[res cogitans]]”.  
But, deep down: in [[René Descartes|Cartesian]] terms, physical property is “[[res extensa]]”; [[intellectual property]] is “[[res cogitans]]”.  


Their similarity started to melt at the edges when the camera was invented, but changed for ever with routinely digitised information: now you could extract information entirely from its mortal frame, and copy it with perfect fidelity ''in the æther''. Older folk, like the JC, may remember the wonderful difference between taping an LP and ripping a CD. Suddenly there was no loss of fidelity at all. Sure, you still needed your substrate, but you could lift the data off it without compromise.  
Their similarity started to melt at the edges with the invention of the camera, but bubbled away forever when, in the 1980s, we began routinely to truck in digitised information. Once you could extract information entirely from its mortal frame, and copy it with perfect fidelity ''in the æther'', the game changed altogether. Older folk, like the JC, may remember the epiphany that came with ripping a CD for the first time. Suddenly there was no loss of fidelity at all. Sure, you still needed your [[substrate]], but you could lift the data off it without compromise.  


This provoked nervous fidgeting from recording label executives in the 1980s, but as long as blank CDs cost a bomb and posting them to your mates even more, “digital piracy” was a manageable problem.   
This provoked nervous fidgeting from recording label executives in the 1980s, but as long as blank CDs cost a bomb and posting them to your mates even more, “digital piracy” was a manageable problem.   


But Napster’s Shawn Fanning, and the monster rollers of the digital networked planet he was surfing, changed this forever. Suddenly, you no longer need ''any'' [[substrate]] — bare, atomised packets of ones and zeros would do — and with a dialup modem you could freely copy and distribute any digital artefact you wanted for nothing. This wasn’t some serendipitous by-product figured out by some crazy hacker: that’s how the internet was architected.<ref>{{author|Lawrence Lessig}}’s magical {{br|Code: Version 2.0}} has a fabulous account of this.</ref>
But the monster rollers of the digital networked planet changed this forever. Napster’s Shawn Fanning was the first to surf them. Suddenly, you no longer need ''any'' [[substrate]] — bare, atomised packets of ones and zeros would do — and with a dial-up modem you could freely copy and distribute any digital artefact you wanted ''for nothing''. This wasn’t some serendipitous by-product figured out by some crazy hacker: that’s how the internet was architected, literally from the very bottom layer.<ref>{{author|Lawrence Lessig}}’s magical {{br|Code: Version 2.0}} has a fabulous account of this.</ref>


The Man — and many struggling artistes, content creators and also Metallica — were confronted with deep questions about authenticity and uniqueness, for which they weren’t ready for and, to be candid, still haven’t really got to grips with, thirty years later.
The Man — and many struggling artistes, content creators and also Metallica — were confronted with deep questions about authenticity and uniqueness, which they weren’t ready for and, to be candid, still haven’t really got to grips with, thirty years later. ''How do I distinguish between my real stuff, and the ripped of guff on the internet''? How do I be ''me''?


But now, in our heady times,<ref>I mean, [[Bulltard|stark raving ''bonkers'' times]].</ref> we find we have a solution. An alternative network architecture that ''guarantees'' authenticity. And what is this marvellous thing?  
And now, in our heady times,<ref>I mean, [[Bulltard|stark raving ''bonkers'' times]].</ref> we are asked to behold a solution. An alternative network architecture that ''guarantees'' authenticity. Problem solved. The real essence delivered back to the creator. And what is this marvellous thing?  


The [[blockchain]].   
The [[blockchain]], of course.   


Where digital copies are indistinguishable from each other and from their originals, ''by design'', [[Non-fungible token|tokens]] on a [[distributed ledger]] are necessarily unique. Each token lives its own immortal, indestructible, unhackable, unique life, written slavishly to every part of the network.
Where digital copies are indistinguishable from each other and from their originals, ''by design'', [[Non-fungible token|tokens]] on a [[distributed ledger]] are necessarily unique. Each token is an individual, incorruptible and free, and lives its own immortal, indestructible, unhackable, ''unique'' life, written slavishly to every part of the network.


Thus, tokens on a [[blockchain]] are to data packets on the internet as Millennials are to Boomers: digitally native, wise, immune to the foolish notions of yesteryear. They exist in, and are of, the digital realm.  
Thus, tokens on a [[blockchain]] are to data packets on the internet as Millennials are to Boomers: digitally native, preternaturally wise, immune to the foolish notions of yesteryear. They exist in, and are of, the digital realm. In this way, a [[blockchain]] and the regular internet are ''[[incommensurable]]'': [[Rocks of Ages: Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life|non-overlapping magisteria]]. It is as if the internet were some flawed Boomer notion that, like so many other flawed Boomer notions, the kids have re-rendered in the language of tomorrow. 


In this way, [[blockchain]] and the regular internet are ''[[incommensurable]]'': [[Rocks of Ages: Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life|non-overlapping magisteria]]. It is as if the internet were some flawed Boomer notion that, like so many other flawed Boomer notions, the kids have re-rendered in the language of tomorrow. But there is a price you pay for entering the [[distributed ledger]]: you get your uniqueness back — and it’s unimpeachably authentic — but in return you must leave the flawed peer-to-peer world, everything on it, and everything on the flawed analog world underlying that, behind.  
The paradigm case  of “a token on a blockchain” is, of course, cryptocurrency. Say what you like about [[bitcoin]] and the [[JC]] has plenty to say [[Bitcoin|elsewhere]] — but it ''is'' “[[blockchain native]]: it exists in, of and only ''within'' the blockchain. Bitcoins are therefore ''intrinsically, certifiably, unique''. You absolutely can’t rip them off. That is about their one true advantage. The only one, maybe, but it is an advantage.  


The paradigm case is, of course, cryptocurrency. Say what you like about [[bitcoin]], and the [[JC]] has plenty to say [[Bitcoin|elsewhere]] — but it ''is'' [[blockchain native]]” — it exists in, of and only ''within'' the blockchain. Bitcoins are therefore ''intrinsically, certifiably, unique''. You absolutely can’t rip them off. That is about their one true advantage. The only one, maybe, but it is an advantage.  
And if you create your artwork ''on'' the [[blockchain]], you get that same native uniqueness: any facsimiles of the artwork that exist ''off blockchain'' — copies floating around on the internet, hanging in fashionable galleries and so on — are, certifiably, [[ontologically]] ''inferior'' to the one on the ledger. That one is the real deal.


Now if you create your artwork ''on'' the [[blockchain]], you get that same native uniqueness: any facsimiles of the artwork that exist ''off blockchain'' — copies floating around on the internet, hanging in fashionable galleries and so on — are, certifiably, [[ontologically]] ''inferior'' to the one on the ledger. That one is the real deal.
But that is a big ''if''.  The price you pay for entering the [[distributed ledger]] and getting your uniqueness back is that you must leave the peer-to-peer world, everything on it, and everything on the even more-flawed analog world underlying it, behind ''forever''.


But — and maybe walled-in social media platforms on the internet, structured as [[decentralised autonomous organisation|DAO]]s are different; the JC doesn’t yet really understand them — mostly, a [[blockchain]] is a crappy place to create art. It’s a ledger system. It is made of cryptographically-hashed code. That is, artistically, ''limiting''.  
Now maybe walled-in media platforms structured as [[decentralised autonomous organisation]]<nowiki/>s are different, but mostly, a [[blockchain]] is a crappy place to create art. It’s a ledger system: a fancy ownership register, made of cryptographically-hashed code. That is, artistically, ''limiting''. Great, if pixellated rainbow cat-poptarts are your thing, but for anyone making art the old-fashioned way — paint and paper, sand and glue, finding bicycle wheels, inverting urinals and signing them — or even more so writing music or literature, whose artwork “natively” lives outside a [[distributed ledger]], or whose [[value]] does not subsist in its [[substrate]], but rather in the abstract information the [[substrate]] carries (such as a book, film or score) — having your artwork encoded on a [[blockchain]], in a unique [[substrate]] doesn’t really help you. It’s one thing for David Hockney to do all his painting on an iPad: but the history of art would have been quite different, and quite a lot less fun, were Caravaggio or Duchamp obliged to restrict themselves to Nyan Cats in a cashbook. 


Look, it’s one thing for David Hockney to do all his painting on an iPad: quite another to realise your whole ''ouevre'' in an electronic cashbook. The blockchain as it is, is a clunky, slow, costly, inflexible thing with only one advantage: uniqueness.
So here’s the irony of the blockchain: if you aren’t quite ready for permanent immersion in the Metaverse: if you are not yet ready let the analogue world go, then not only does the blockchain not help: it makes things worse. To mint a token of a canonical “real world” artwork, is to create a non-fungible ''representation'' of it — a non-copy — the one that is certifiably, [[ontologically]] inferior ''to every other ripped-off copy:'' unlike a digital copy, it is uniquely, definitively ''not'' the original work.


This is great if pixellated rainbow cat-poptarts are your thing, but for anyone making art the old-fashioned way — paint and paper, sand and glue, inverting urinals and signing them — or even more so writing music or literature — whose artwork “natively” lives outside a [[distributed ledger]], or whose [[value]] does not subsist in its [[substrate]], but rather in the abstract information the [[substrate]] carries (such as a book, film or score) — having your artwork encoded on a [[blockchain]], in a unique [[substrate]] doesn’t really help you.
====Is uniqueness really, er, ''special''?====
But does being uniquely, definitively ''not a duplicate'', bestow some kind of intrinsic value in and of itself? This, perhaps, is the logic that propels cryptocurrency. It seem like false logic but, at the time of writing, 1.15 trillion dollars begs to differ. But is this uniqueness the kids have contrived of value in and of itself?


If you import a "canonical" “real world” artwork, then the ''[[blockchain]] representation'' is the one that is certifiably, [[ontologically]] ''inferior:'' it is uniquely, definitively ''not'' the original work.
The rampant copyability of anything everything in Web 2.0 no doubt prompted the stampede to non-fungibility. ''Authenticity'' is in deep demand: no-one trusts experts anymore. ''Everything'' is ripped off. ''Everything'' is fake. Indubitability — [[certainty]] — is some kind of holy grail.<ref>But see our essay as to why [[doubt]] is no bad thing.</ref>   
 
Ironically, putting a “real” artwork on [[blockchain]] makes your [[non-fungible token]] ''worse'' than a straight digital copy, because a token definitely isn’t the original.
 
====Is uniqueness really, er, ''special''?====
The rampant copy-ability of anything everything in Web 2.0 no doubt prompted the stampede to non-fungibility. ''Authenticity'' is in deep demand: no-one trusts experts anymore. ''Everything'' is ripped off. ''Everything'' is fake. Indubitability — [[certainty]] — is some kind of holy grail.<ref>But see our essay as to why [[doubt]] is no bad thing.</ref>   


But is uniqueness, in the abstract, of intrinsic value, ''in and of itself''?
But is uniqueness, in the abstract, of intrinsic value, ''in and of itself''?
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*[[Non-fungible token]]s
*[[Non-fungible token]]s
{{Ref}}
{{Ref}}
<references />

Revision as of 17:11, 16 November 2021

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The Blockchain’s unique selling point is uniqueness: an entry on the ledger is fixed, immutable, unalterable and unique for all time. It cannot be changed, without editing every node on the distributed ledger, and it cannot be duplicated. This sense of uniqueness, which is encoded into the design of a distributed ledger, quite alien to the engineering of the internet, which depends on duplication as a means of transmission.

The internet not only allows, but encourages lossless copying: that’s the essence of its end-to-end architecture. This brought to a head a conundrum for intellectual property laws that had been brewing since, arguably the time of the Jacquard loom. The idea of “intellectual property” was forged in an analog age, where the distinction between an original and a copy was clear and ontologically fundamental. Also, the cost of generating copies was non-trivial and did not easily scale: since intellectual property was necessarily embedded in a physical substrate — to read a novel you needed a physical book — you could treat intellectual property as if it were physical property. To all intents, it was.

But, deep down: in Cartesian terms, physical property is “res extensa”; intellectual property is “res cogitans”.

Their similarity started to melt at the edges with the invention of the camera, but bubbled away forever when, in the 1980s, we began routinely to truck in digitised information. Once you could extract information entirely from its mortal frame, and copy it with perfect fidelity in the æther, the game changed altogether. Older folk, like the JC, may remember the epiphany that came with ripping a CD for the first time. Suddenly there was no loss of fidelity at all. Sure, you still needed your substrate, but you could lift the data off it without compromise.

This provoked nervous fidgeting from recording label executives in the 1980s, but as long as blank CDs cost a bomb and posting them to your mates even more, “digital piracy” was a manageable problem.

But the monster rollers of the digital networked planet changed this forever. Napster’s Shawn Fanning was the first to surf them. Suddenly, you no longer need any substrate — bare, atomised packets of ones and zeros would do — and with a dial-up modem you could freely copy and distribute any digital artefact you wanted for nothing. This wasn’t some serendipitous by-product figured out by some crazy hacker: that’s how the internet was architected, literally from the very bottom layer.[1]

The Man — and many struggling artistes, content creators and also Metallica — were confronted with deep questions about authenticity and uniqueness, which they weren’t ready for and, to be candid, still haven’t really got to grips with, thirty years later. How do I distinguish between my real stuff, and the ripped of guff on the internet? How do I be me?

And now, in our heady times,[2] we are asked to behold a solution. An alternative network architecture that guarantees authenticity. Problem solved. The real essence delivered back to the creator. And what is this marvellous thing?

The blockchain, of course.

Where digital copies are indistinguishable from each other and from their originals, by design, tokens on a distributed ledger are necessarily unique. Each token is an individual, incorruptible and free, and lives its own immortal, indestructible, unhackable, unique life, written slavishly to every part of the network.

Thus, tokens on a blockchain are to data packets on the internet as Millennials are to Boomers: digitally native, preternaturally wise, immune to the foolish notions of yesteryear. They exist in, and are of, the digital realm. In this way, a blockchain and the regular internet are incommensurable: non-overlapping magisteria. It is as if the internet were some flawed Boomer notion that, like so many other flawed Boomer notions, the kids have re-rendered in the language of tomorrow.

The paradigm case of “a token on a blockchain” is, of course, cryptocurrency. Say what you like about bitcoin — and the JC has plenty to say elsewhere — but it isblockchain native”: it exists in, of and only within the blockchain. Bitcoins are therefore intrinsically, certifiably, unique. You absolutely can’t rip them off. That is about their one true advantage. The only one, maybe, but it is an advantage.

And if you create your artwork on the blockchain, you get that same native uniqueness: any facsimiles of the artwork that exist off blockchain — copies floating around on the internet, hanging in fashionable galleries and so on — are, certifiably, ontologically inferior to the one on the ledger. That one is the real deal.

But that is a big if. The price you pay for entering the distributed ledger and getting your uniqueness back is that you must leave the peer-to-peer world, everything on it, and everything on the even more-flawed analog world underlying it, behind forever.

Now maybe walled-in media platforms structured as decentralised autonomous organisations are different, but mostly, a blockchain is a crappy place to create art. It’s a ledger system: a fancy ownership register, made of cryptographically-hashed code. That is, artistically, limiting. Great, if pixellated rainbow cat-poptarts are your thing, but for anyone making art the old-fashioned way — paint and paper, sand and glue, finding bicycle wheels, inverting urinals and signing them — or even more so writing music or literature, whose artwork “natively” lives outside a distributed ledger, or whose value does not subsist in its substrate, but rather in the abstract information the substrate carries (such as a book, film or score) — having your artwork encoded on a blockchain, in a unique substrate doesn’t really help you. It’s one thing for David Hockney to do all his painting on an iPad: but the history of art would have been quite different, and quite a lot less fun, were Caravaggio or Duchamp obliged to restrict themselves to Nyan Cats in a cashbook.

So here’s the irony of the blockchain: if you aren’t quite ready for permanent immersion in the Metaverse: if you are not yet ready let the analogue world go, then not only does the blockchain not help: it makes things worse. To mint a token of a canonical “real world” artwork, is to create a non-fungible representation of it — a non-copy — the one that is certifiably, ontologically inferior to every other ripped-off copy: unlike a digital copy, it is uniquely, definitively not the original work.

Is uniqueness really, er, special?

But does being uniquely, definitively not a duplicate, bestow some kind of intrinsic value in and of itself? This, perhaps, is the logic that propels cryptocurrency. It seem like false logic but, at the time of writing, 1.15 trillion dollars begs to differ. But is this uniqueness the kids have contrived of value in and of itself?

The rampant copyability of anything everything in Web 2.0 no doubt prompted the stampede to non-fungibility. Authenticity is in deep demand: no-one trusts experts anymore. Everything is ripped off. Everything is fake. Indubitability — certainty — is some kind of holy grail.[3]

But is uniqueness, in the abstract, of intrinsic value, in and of itself?

We say, “no,” all the above notwithstanding. The JC has a small commonplace book of poems he composed, as a moleish adolescent.[4] It exists in single copy, in fountain pen ink on cartridge paper, rendered in his youthful, spidery left-handed scrawl. Make no mistake: these are some of the worst poems composed in the history of civilisation.[5] Not one has been committed to any other format and nor, if the JC has any say in the matter, will they ever be. They are, thus, utterly unique.

Now: do these ghastly poems have a single iota of value? Outside their very real extortion potential, they do not. Does their critical uniqueness change this? It does not.

There is great danger of crushing humiliation should they ever get out. So why does he keep them? The JC has wondered about this, and never managed a good answer — beyond the thrill they generate. The thrill from the singular terror that they ever be found by anyone and leaked to a disinterested world — God forbid, minted on a blockchain: encoded on every node of our future universe, perpetually inerasable part of our canon.

See also

References

  1. Lawrence Lessig’s magical Code: Version 2.0 has a fabulous account of this.
  2. I mean, stark raving bonkers times.
  3. But see our essay as to why doubt is no bad thing.
  4. Adrian Mole-ish, or Wind-in-the-Willows Mole-ish, it doesn’t really make a difference. Moleish.
  5. They would give Paula Nancy Millstone Jennings a run for her money.