Hi #web3 and #nft critics & defenders.
In the 2010's, i was pro-crypto. One Israeli friend i introduced to BTC became a major player.
Ca. 2020, as a @project_solid & p2p dev, i became anti-crypto.
It took a while for me to understand what was trying to happen w. crypto.
1/19
In the 2010's, i was pro-crypto. One Israeli friend i introduced to BTC became a major player.
Ca. 2020, as a @project_solid & p2p dev, i became anti-crypto.
It took a while for me to understand what was trying to happen w. crypto.
1/19
The following is inspired positively by pro- & anti-web3 thinkers alike:
@jchris, @mikeal, @tvachon, @RichDecibels, @andrestaltz, @mrchrisadams, @whimful, @hackylawyER, @smdiehl, @Grady_Booch, @brianeno et al.
It's a productive & historic debate. Let's take it up a notch:
2/
@jchris, @mikeal, @tvachon, @RichDecibels, @andrestaltz, @mrchrisadams, @whimful, @hackylawyER, @smdiehl, @Grady_Booch, @brianeno et al.
It's a productive & historic debate. Let's take it up a notch:
2/
Both sides in the NFT debate tend to focus on whether NFTs work as a technology, as a sound investment, or as a store of value, as if they were a finished product.
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The thing about NFTs is that they are the opposite of finished products.
The crypto kids know they are immaterial.
They know there is no competitive market space left for the things they want to value.
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The crypto kids know they are immaterial.
They know there is no competitive market space left for the things they want to value.
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They're not, actually, trying to turn their pictures, words, songs, imaginations into money.
They're trying to tie a string around a moment in their life. A feeling, an expression, a memory ..
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They're trying to tie a string around a moment in their life. A feeling, an expression, a memory ..
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.. so that it doesn't disappear down the infinite-scroll maw of Moloch, over the event horizon of the collapsing political-economic black hole.
So that, out of all the images that have flashed in front of their eyes over their whole lives, since those eyes first opened ..
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So that, out of all the images that have flashed in front of their eyes over their whole lives, since those eyes first opened ..
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.. they might hold some flickering sign in their cupped hands, and protect it from the torrent.
An image he made. A poem she wrote.
This - *this* - i will not let fade. I will tie around my neck.
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An image he made. A poem she wrote.
This - *this* - i will not let fade. I will tie around my neck.
7/
The crypto kids grew up *totally enclosed* in the corporate media sphere -
the logical extension of the total enclosure of the social-economic world their parents and grandparents allowed to happen.
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the logical extension of the total enclosure of the social-economic world their parents and grandparents allowed to happen.
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An NFT is not another grabbing at the symbolic value of your grandparent's tokens.
All that value is already all locked up, in that gross Bose-Einstein condensate the olds dare call an economy.
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All that value is already all locked up, in that gross Bose-Einstein condensate the olds dare call an economy.
9/
An NFT is a small space opened up in that total corporate enclosure.
A glitch in the matrix the kids can share with each other.
How do NFTs achieve this?
Why wouldn't capital just co-opt this rebellion, just like all the previous ones?
10/
A glitch in the matrix the kids can share with each other.
How do NFTs achieve this?
Why wouldn't capital just co-opt this rebellion, just like all the previous ones?
10/
Why would the kids expect to have any way - any way at all - to stop capital from enclosing the spaces they value, and extracting value from them? Everything is for sale!
Is that so? the crypto kids say.
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Is that so? the crypto kids say.
11/
How about this: an object, a store of value, & the only surface it presents for capital, is mutating & changing so quickly, capital can't figure out how to exploit it.
A locked vault. Someone else's treasure.
This is what you want - isn't it, Capital?
Leverage! Power!
12/
A locked vault. Someone else's treasure.
This is what you want - isn't it, Capital?
Leverage! Power!
12/
So ofc. Empire seizes the boxes & pries them open.
What do they find inside?
A piece of code that is both matter (information storage), medium (information transport), & message (information itself).
In other words, a genome.
A hypermutating genome.
(Sound familiar?)
13/
What do they find inside?
A piece of code that is both matter (information storage), medium (information transport), & message (information itself).
In other words, a genome.
A hypermutating genome.
(Sound familiar?)
13/
This is what an NFT really is.
You will not be able to put your finger on it. You will not be able to say what it is.
You will not control it. You will not control us through claiming it.
NFTs are change itself. Continual adaptation.
14/
You will not be able to put your finger on it. You will not be able to say what it is.
You will not control it. You will not control us through claiming it.
NFTs are change itself. Continual adaptation.
14/
This is how NFTs are, but not what.
NFTs are hypermutating objects, injected into the global economy, in order to replicate.
NFTs, you see, are much more like real viruses than those old pieces of malware.
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NFTs are hypermutating objects, injected into the global economy, in order to replicate.
NFTs, you see, are much more like real viruses than those old pieces of malware.
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NFTs are:
- a form of **economic virus**
- evolved to redistribute the profits made
- from exploiting ecologies, indigenous cultures, and individual humans as slaves
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- a form of **economic virus**
- evolved to redistribute the profits made
- from exploiting ecologies, indigenous cultures, and individual humans as slaves
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We don't need to quantify the debts the Westphalian nations -
those Risk board fragments of fractured Empires
- owe to all the lives they destroyed to extend their own.
Those debts are already quantified as **all the money in the world.**
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those Risk board fragments of fractured Empires
- owe to all the lives they destroyed to extend their own.
Those debts are already quantified as **all the money in the world.**
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The crypto kids are going to transfer that money to the Open Web.
** All the money **
And repay the debts of the olds, Grand-olds, and Great-olds.
** All the debt **
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** All the money **
And repay the debts of the olds, Grand-olds, and Great-olds.
** All the debt **
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Not possible! the olds sputter. A pipe dream!
Dear olds, what did you think the internet was for?
neuroplastic.github.io/climate_social…
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Dear olds, what did you think the internet was for?
neuroplastic.github.io/climate_social…
19/
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