[Air-L] [EXTERNAL] the NFT bandwagon

Fri Dec 24 22:47:44 PST 2021

Hello Thomas,

Thank you for your reply. I’m going start by unpacking one of the terms that you use repeatedly - “Web 3”.

I am old enough to remember the first “Web 3.0” - which was associated with TBL’s notion of the semantic web. I always found TBL’s continued disappointment with his own offspring mildly amusing (and a little tragic). The web has actually become more semantic - largely not thru the proposed RDF standards but thru private knowledge graphs, public open linked data, APIs, and microservices. This has led to some weird outcomes - like the massively profitable Facebook trying to offload its fact-checking responsibilities to the not-for-profit, commons-based Wikipedia.

There is a rhetorical power to associating yourself with the original Web - a classic underdog story. An ignored and misunderstood technology goes on to take over the world. And aligning yourself as a repetition of that narrative pretty much neutralizes all criticism of you. You will prevail, just as pets.co-, er, Google prevailed. But as Marx noted, history repeats first as tragedy then as farce.

So the claims of the CryptoBros should be treated with some scepticism. Most of the crypto experiments will be failures. And despite billions of dollars of investment, nothing of actual long-term utility seems to have come out of that milieu - yet. With all that money and brainpower, it would be surprising if something useful did not emerge (DAOs, distributed ledgers, smart contracts). But so far, Bitcoin remains a speculation engine, not an actual usable currency: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2302383-hundreds-of-salvadorans-claim-money-is-vanishing-from-bitcoin-accounts/

As for the comment about “interesting” - well, a technology only becomes interesting when it comes boring. The iPhone made issues of mobile computing power, GPS, UX, and app development boring (i.e. technically stable) and in doing so unleashed a wave of interesting mobile innovation. Right now, crypto is the wrong kind of interesting.

N.B. I am not accusing you of being a CryptoBro - your positions seem a lot more nuanced than that. But I am challenging the CryptoNarrative of Web3.

Regards,

Matt

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________________________________
From: thomas scovell <tscovell at gmail.com>
Sent: Saturday, December 25, 2021 7:12:37 AM
To: Matthew Moore <Matthew.Moore at uts.edu.au>
Cc: xDxD.vs.xDxD <xdxd.vs.xdxd at gmail.com>; List Aoir <air-l at listserv.aoir.org>
Subject: Re: [Air-L] [EXTERNAL] the NFT bandwagon

Eno is, by his own admission at the end of that interview, "in a bad mood".

I think it's unfortunate that a man who was so prescient during web 1.0 is now failing to engage with web 3. Here he is in 1995 in Wired<https://www.wired.com/1995/05/eno-2>,

"But art has not ceased to affect us; it's just that the process we call art is happening elsewhere, in areas that might be called by other names. I always think of medieval heraldry: so intensely relevant for hundreds of years, and now a total mystery to nearly all of us. The traditional sites for art activity seem to be losing their power, while new sites for art are becoming powerful. We have been looking for art in the wrong places."

The same could definitely be said today imho. At least if he were engaging with it in a more positive mindset he might find a lot more to ruminate on than the understanding he shows in that short interview. But bad questions = bad answers.

Salvatore, I thought your piece was excellent - web 1.0 was full of (public) discussions about how it might change culture, whereas web 2.0 (which actually did) had very little useful discourse in that space. As we enter this new era I hope some of this smart thinking makes its way beyond academia and the fringe. (For my own practice we're working on a project on diversity<https://www.yesqueen.club/> in web 3. This thread<https://twitter.com/karsendaily/status/1473534556309385217> on twitter nicely deconstructs the pervasive liberterian mindset that needs to be torn out of web3 before it becomes as negative as 2.0.)

Matthew - whilst I understand having concerns about what web 3 might lead to - I don't understand how anyone could possibly find it "uninteresting". ;)

"ICOs and NFTs feel like the consumer version of what CDOs and CDSs were to banks in the 2000s."

For a start it moves fast enough that there's always a new thing to unpick. ICOs (which were the equivalent of ponzi penny stocks I'd say not CDOs) are very 2018, today its IDOs (2020) and airdrop DAOs (2021) that are the fundraising route of preference. As Matt Levine from Bloomberg says (who is every bit as cynical as Eno but more nuanced and informed it seems), crypto is spending a few years rediscovering and reinventing the past century of financial products.

In some cases with the same failures, in others with real innovation. If you want a great one to unpick, check out Olympus DAO<https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2021/12/05/olympus-dao-might-be-the-future-of-money-or-it-might-be-a-ponzi/> / OHM - who are one part ponzi, one part cult (3,3!), one part real financial innovation - overall one big fascinating example of the micro-cultures that crypto can create.

It'd be a shame if smart people were to disengage with web 3 because of the basic media representation of it makes it about financial scams and shams and not all the other more fascinating elements it brings - that have real potential, but need guidance. (from more than cis straight white "tech bros").

- thomas

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On Sat, 25 Dec 2021 at 08:33, Matthew Moore <Matthew.Moore at uts.edu.au<mailto:Matthew.Moore at uts.edu.au>> wrote:
Hi Salvatore,

I broadly agree with everything Eno says. I am bemused by crypto and NFTs. Like Eno, I think part of their growth is a function of fiscal stimulus and low interest rates of the last decade.

Some comments:

  *   While I am uninterested in crypto/NFTs, I am very interested in equity crowdfunding (that’s where I do my speculative investing - and it comes out of my entertainment budget, not my retirement funds).
  *   I would rather buy art from artists I love (or do something else to support them directly) than mess about with NFTs.
  *   I share your concerns about the drive to turn everything into a recordable transaction.
  *   ICOs and NFTs feel like the consumer version of what CDOs and CDSs were to banks in the 2000s.

Regards,

Matt

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________________________________
From: Air-L <air-l-bounces at listserv.aoir.org<mailto:air-l-bounces at listserv.aoir.org>> on behalf of xDxD.vs.xDxD <xdxd.vs.xdxd at gmail.com<mailto:xdxd.vs.xdxd at gmail.com>>
Sent: Friday, December 24, 2021 7:32:14 PM
To: List Aoir <air-l at listserv.aoir.org<mailto:air-l at listserv.aoir.org>>
Subject: [EXTERNAL] [Air-L] the NFT bandwagon

hi everyone

as you probably have seen Brian Eno has expressed harshly about NFTs:
https://the-crypto-syllabus.com/brian-eno-on-nfts-and-automatism/<https://the-crypto-syllabus.com/brian-eno-on-nfts-and-automatism/><https://the-crypto-syllabus.com/brian-eno-on-nfts-and-automatism<https://the-crypto-syllabus.com/brian-eno-on-nfts-and-automatism>>

many have expressed in similar ways, while many others see an opportunity

here, i wanted to share two article i wrote: one now and the previous one
in 2017

the first is this one:
https://xdxd-vs-xdxd.medium.com/nft-12cb8583ca23<https://xdxd-vs-xdxd.medium.com/nft-12cb8583ca23><https://xdxd-vs-xdxd.medium.com/nft-12cb8583ca23<https://xdxd-vs-xdxd.medium.com/nft-12cb8583ca23>>

and the previous one is a sort of pre-requisite:
https://startupsventurecapital.com/the-financialization-of-life-a90fe2cb839f<https://startupsventurecapital.com/the-financialization-of-life-a90fe2cb839f><https://startupsventurecapital.com/the-financialization-of-life-a90fe2cb839f<https://startupsventurecapital.com/the-financialization-of-life-a90fe2cb839f>>

both try to make a cultural/mediological/psychological analysis more
accessible (as you can see, the style and spaces for publication are
generalistic)

i was wondering if anyone here has a similar approach and, of course,
differences and critiques which we can discuss

i wish you all happy holidays, if you can, and best of wishes for those who
cannot
Salvatore
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