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But physical property is “[[res extensa]]”; [[intellectual property]] is “[[res cogitans]]”. | 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 | 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. | ||
This provoked nervous fidgeting in the 1980s, but as long blank CDs cost | 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 | 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> | ||
The | 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. | ||
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? | |||
The [[blockchain]]. | |||
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. | |||
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. | 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. | ||
In this | 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 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. | |||
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. | 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. | ||