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[[File:Chesney Hawkes.png|450px|thumb|center|A unique fellow, yesterday. Actually, about 30 years ago. Jeez.]] | [[File:Chesney Hawkes.png|450px|thumb|center|A unique fellow, yesterday. Actually, about 30 years ago. Jeez.]] | ||
}}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 | }}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, without editing every node on the [[distributed ledger]]. Encoded into its design is a uniqueness of each digital quite alien to the engineering of the internet, which is predicated, more or less, on copying as a means of transmission. Where the regular internet not only allows lossless copying, but encourages — is ''predicated'' on — it: that’s at the heart of its [[End-to-end principle|end-to-end]] architecture — it suffers from the conceptual issue that any digital copy of an original digital artefact is, to every intent and purpose, the equal of the original, a ''copy'' of an entry on the distributed ledger is, [[ontologically]], not. By its code, it is unique. Tokens on a blockchain are to documents on the internet as Millenials are to Boomers: digitally native. They exist in, and are of, the digital realm. | ||
In this regard, [[blockchain]] and the regular internet are | 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. | ||
You could recreate the regular internet on the blockchain, but it would be — well, ''different''. | |||
Now [[bitcoin]] — say what you like about it, and we have plenty to say [[Bitcoin|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 [[bitcoin]] — say what you like about it, and we have plenty to say [[Bitcoin|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 exist ''off blockchain'' — copies floating around on the internet 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 — 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''. | |||
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. | |||
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 or a score) — 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 the ''blockchain representation'' is the one that is certifiably, ontologically ''inferior:'' it is uniquely, definitively ''not'' the original work. | 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. |