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[[File:NyanCat.png|450px|frameless|center]] | [[File:NyanCat.png|450px|frameless|center]] | ||
}}The [[Blockchain]]’s unique selling point is ''[[uniqueness]]'': | }}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. | ||
In this regard, [[blockchain]] and the regular internet are ''[[incommensurable]]'': non-overlapping magisteria. 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, everything on it, and everything on the flawed analog world underlying that, behind. | 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]]”. | |||
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 ther''. Older folk 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. | |||
This provoked nervous fidgeting in the 1980s, but as long blank CDs cost money and the world was not digitally networked, “digital piracy” was a manageable problem. | |||
But the internet changed this forever. Once you no longer need a substrate and could freely copy and distribute digital artefacts, the world was confronted with deep questions about authenticity and uniqueness which it wasn’t ready for and hasn’t really got to grips with even yet. | |||
The blockchain is touted as an answer to that conundrum. | |||
Where digital copies are indistinguishable from each other and from their originals, by design, tokens on a ledger are necessarily distinct. Each token lives | |||
Digital natives are | |||
By contrast, a ''copy'' of an entry on a distributed ledger is, [[ontologically]], not. By its code, it is unique. | |||
Thus, tokens on a [[blockchain]] are to data packets on the internet as Millennials are to Boomers: digitally native. They exist in, and are of, the digital realm. | |||
In this regard, [[blockchain]] and the regular internet are ''[[incommensurable]]'': [[Rocks of Ages: Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life|non-overlapping magisteria]]. 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, everything on it, and everything on the flawed analog world underlying that, behind. | |||
You could recreate the regular internet on the [[blockchain]], but it would be — well, ''different''. | You could recreate the regular internet on the [[blockchain]], but it would be — well, ''different''. | ||