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Maybe I'm owning?
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A reader pointed out that last week's Freshly Brewed Thoughts didn't explicitly connect the Anti-Defamation League's pyramid of hate with what was going on at Basecamp. The pyramid had been shared inside the company and its resulting conversation was reported in a wide variety of media reports. The reader then shared that they had a bunch of questions about NFTs (non-fungible tokens) and shared some links, which reignited my rabbit hole into all things Blockchain. A couple months ago I wrote:
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Spoiler: the whole thing smells funny. You see, blockchain proponents like to spout intellectual about equality and decentralizing power, which are good aims. But the current landscape isn't promoting equality and power is not being doled out to marginalized groups. It is simply the wild west. And NFTs for art aren't liberating the artists, it's an absolute scam. Much like the world of fine art.
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My reader kindly shared a number of links to people/collectives who are
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- using blockchains that are built to be sustainable (i.e. unlike the well known blockchains of Bitcoin and Ethereum)
- attempting to capitalize on their own art (and being successful at it) through the use of NFTs
- attempting to understand the implications of this tech on society writ large
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"Is all this a big pyramid of ponzis 2.0? Alternatively, could this help support initiatives or projects outside of conventional circuits? Can this support change in a meaningful way?"
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Frankly, idfk, because everything about cryptocurrency, blockchain, NFTs and digital assets generally elicit a lot of philosophical ponderings in my brain. Dr Doug Belshaw said off-handedly at some point this week "I don't know...somehow NFTs remind me a bit of DRM" (paraphrased), and I got to thinking about "ownership". Is a VHS worth more than a movie you bought on iTunes because it's physical? What if VCRs don't exist anymore? And if Apple decides your digital assets don't belong to you anymore?
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How does the concept of "ownership" influence our culture and society? And what would it mean for the world if we untangled our ideas about ownership? I don't have any answers either, just thoughts. Freshly Brewed Thoughts about my own conflicting understandings and attitudes. I'm not the only one spinning their wheels here. Loads of people working at the intersection of tech and society are doing the same.
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Maybe I'm engineering?
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I guess you know that these concepts of rights and ownership and money and power and stuff aren't just things I contemplate in relation to tech. So much is philosophical, political, moral.
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When I read that white liberals are "progressive except for Palestine", I have to raise an eyebrow. Is that true? Because I think it's more "white liberals in the West don't know shit about Palestine". Did you know that you can say "Fuck Israel" and not be an anti-semite? Fuck Israel. The series of events from this past week, Israelis being able to reclaim deeds and properties from decades ago, while the Palestinians do not have that same right, and instead do not "own" the homes they bought – that situation it happened to the East Germans too. It's not a one to one comparison because the scale of violence is very different. The Israeli military are dragging people from their homes. West Germans used the courts. There is also the matter of race. It's not a one to one comparison, I know. I'm sure there are stories, so many stories.
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Imagine what it is like for a family to "own" a home for over 40 years, to be raised there, to raise your own children, three generations of a family home fits into 40 years of "ownership". And then some other people come along and say "Yeah, but that was mine before the war so get out." Now imagine it the other way around. Having to flee.
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Oy vey, friends, the world is complex. "Ownership is complex". FWIW the animosity between East and West Germans has all but disappeared. Decolonization and reunification is possible. We humans are complex creatures. We have non-profits for killing and we can engineer the sky. Dime store novels and digital tech have social commonalities and vampires are good at promoting vaccines.
We don't make a lot of sense.
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Maybe I need help?
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Are any of you using Blinkist? They keep trying to convince me that paying someone else to read for me is somehow a good idea, but it feels kind of icky to take the shortcut. I have a relationship with reading... maybe I think too much anyway, which is a newsletter terminating cliche.
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