Uniqueness: Difference between revisions

{{a|devil|{{image|NyanCat|png|}}}}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, deep down: in [[René Descartes|Cartesian]] terms, paper is physical, real-world stuff: in Descartes’ lexicon “[[res extensa]]”; [[intellectual property]] is ''thinking stuff'': “[[res cogitans]]”. It doesn’t have any physical dimension. It is [[Symbolic|''symbolic'']].  

The differences between the physical and the intellectual started to melt at the edges upon the camera’s arrival. They bubbled away forever when, in the 1980s, we got floppy disks and began routinely to truck in digitial information. Once you could extract information entirely from its [[substrate]] and copy it with perfect fidelity ''in the æther'', the game changed altogether.

Older folk, like the JC, may remember the epiphany that came with ripping a CD for the first time. Suddenly there was no loss of fidelity at all.  No need for a TEAC C-90. Sure, you still needed a blank CD, but you could lift the data off it without compromise.  

This provoked nervous fidgeting from recording label executives, but as long as blank CDs cost a bomb and posting them to your mates even more, “digital piracy” was a manageable problem.   

But when the monster rollers of the digital network broke on the shores of the 1990s, all of this changed forever. Napster was the first to surf them. Suddenly, you no longer need ''any'' [[substrate]]: bare, atomised packets of ones and zeros would do. With a dial-up 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 [[End-to-end principle|how the internet is architected]], literally from its very bottom layer.<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, which they weren’t ready for and, to be candid, still haven’t really got to grips with, thirty years later. ''How do I distinguish between my real stuff, and the ripped off guff on the internet''?  

The [[blockchain]].   

Tokens on a [[blockchain]] are to the file transfer protocol as Millennials are to Boomers: digitally native, preternaturally wise, immune to the foolish notions of yesteryear. They exist in, and are of, the digital realm. In this way, a [[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.   

The paradigm case  of “a token on a blockchain” 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.<ref>Unless you are planning to use them buy naughty things on the dark web, that is: see Andy Greenberg’s excellent {{Br|Tracers in the Dark: The Global Hunt for the Crime Lords of Cryptocurrency}}.</ref> 

And 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 maybe walled-in media platforms structured as [[decentralised autonomous organisation]]s are different, but mostly, a [[blockchain]] is a crappy place to create art. It’s a ledger system: a fancy ownership register, made of cryptographically-hashed code. That is, artistically, ''limiting''. Great, if pixelated rainbow cat pop-tarts are your thing, but for anyone making art the old-fashioned way — paint and paper, sand and glue, finding bicycle wheels, inverting urinals and signing them — or even more so writing music or literature, whose ''value'' as artwork “natively” lives outside a [[distributed ledger]], or whose [[value]] ''does not subsist in its [[substrate]] at all'', 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. It’s one thing for David Hockney to do all his painting on an iPad: but the history of art would have been quite different, and quite a lot less fun, were Caravaggio or Duchamp obliged to restrict themselves to designing Nyan Cats in a cashbook.   

So here’s the irony of the [[blockchain]]: if you aren’t quite ready for permanent immersion in the Metaverse; if you are not yet ready let the analogue world go, then not only does the blockchain not help: it makes things worse. To mint a token of a canonical “real world” artwork, is to create a non-fungible ''representation'' of it — a non-copy — the one that is certifiably, [[ontologically]] inferior ''to every other ripped-off copy:'' unlike a digital copy, it is uniquely, definitively ''not'' the original work.   

===The JC’s adolescent [[peotry]] as the case against the intrinsic value of uniqueness===

The rampant copyability 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>We use “holy” advisedly. But see our essay as to why [[doubt]] is no bad thing.</ref>   

But does this structural uniqueness — being uniquely, definitively ''not a duplicate'' — bestow some kind of intrinsic value ''in and of itself''?  

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, or [[nigel molesworth]]-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.  

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.