Uniqueness: Difference between revisions

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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 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 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 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>

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?  

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, wise, immune to the foolish notions of yesteryear. They exist in, and are of, the digital realm.  

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.

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, film or 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.  

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''?

We say, “no,” all the above [[Notwithstanding anything to the contrary|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. Moleish.</ref> 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.<ref>They would give Paula Nancy Millstone Jennings a run for her money.</ref> 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.