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The FT reports that as long ago as 2016 Gartner put blockchain near the top of its “peak inflated expectations” curve. | The FT reports that as long ago as 2016 Gartner put blockchain near the top of its “peak inflated expectations” curve. | ||
===Uniqueness and the promise of non-fungible tokens=== | |||
The Blockchain's unique selling point is ''uniqueness'': a single entry on the ledger is there, it is fixed, it is unique for all time and uneditable. Any facsimile of it is non-[[fungible]]. By contrast, the regular internet not only allows lossless copying, but encourages it and, in fact, is predicated on it. That’s at the heart of its packet switching, [[End-to-end principle|end-to-end]] architecture. | |||
In this regard blockchain and the regular internet are completely [[incommensurable]]. This is the price you pay for entering the [[distributed ledger]]: you get your uniqueness, but in return you must leave the flawed peer to peer world, and anything on it, behind. You can recreate the regular internet on the blockchain, but it is — well, ''different''. | |||
Now [[bitcoin]] — say what you like about it, and we have plenty to say elsewhere — is “[[blockchain native]]” — it exists in, of and only ''within'' the blockchain. Bitcoins are therefore ''intrinsically, certifiably, unique''. That is about their one true advantage. | |||
Now if you create your artwork *on* the [[blockchain]], you get that same native uniqueness: any facsimiles of the artwork that exists off the ''blockchain'' — copies floating around on the internet and so on — are, certifiably, ontologically inferior to the one on the ledger. | |||
But — and maybe walled gardens on the internet structured as [[decentralised autonomous organisation|DAO]]s are different, we don’t yet really understand them — mostly, a blockchain is a really crappy place to create art. Really limiting. Look, it’s one thing for David Hockney to do all his painting on an iPad: quite another to do it all in an electronic cashbook. | |||
But for everyone who is still making art with paint and paper, inverting urinals, or even more so writing music or literature — such that your artwork “natively” lives outside a distributed ledger, or its value does not subsist in its [[substrate]], but in the abstract information the substrate carries (such as a book or a score) — for you guys, having your artwork encoded on a blockchain in a unique substrate doesn’t really help you. | |||
If you import a "canonical" “real world” artwork, then it is the ''blockchain representation'' that is certifiably, ontologically inferior: it is uniquely, definitively *not* the original work. Ironically, putting a real artwork on blockchain makes your copy *worse* than a straight digital copy. | |||
====Is uniqueness really, er, ''special''?=== | |||
The rampant copy-ability of everything in this day and age no doubt prompted this rush 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 any value, ''in and of itself''? | |||
We would say, “no,” all the above notwithstanding. | |||
The JC has a small commonplace book of poems he composed, as a moleish adolescent.<ref>Adrian Mole-ish, or Wind-in-the-Willows Mole-ish, it doesn’t really make a difference.</ref> There exists a single copy in fountain pen ink rendered in his youthful, spidery left-handed scrawl. They are some of the worst poems composed in the history of civilisation.<ref>They would give Paula Nancy Millstone Jennings a run for her money.</ref> Not one of these poems 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. | |||
Do they have an iota of value? Outside their extortion potential, they do not. Does their uniqueness change this? It does not. | |||
Why does he keep them? It is impossible to say. | |||
===Is it — you know ...?=== | ===Is it — you know ...?=== | ||