It’s been a minute since I posted here. Lot of distraction around the holidays, that’s most of it. Things are… bad right now, circumstances that I pretty much created solo, so that’s not helping. But I’m trying to make it better. Part of that will be writing more frequently, if I’m able.
So, let’s dig into something.
Like many, I’ve been unable to escape references to NFTs basically fucking everywhere in day-to-day life since around last April. While it’s an easy trend to dunk on — and so, so many people do frequently — lately I’ve been pondering why specifically the concept bothers me as much as it does. What I’ve come up with is that the concept of a non-permeable digital good is fundamentally opposed to my views on data and information.
My Dad’s career is formative to a lot of those views. (He recently turned 70, by the by, so in the event he reads this; Hey Dad! Hanging out on your birthday was a great time, weird though it is to hang out on the phone 1500 miles removed from someone drinking the same whiskey.) His extensive and varied work history aside, by the time I was a kid, my dad had settled in at the helm of a long-neglected film archive at his hometown university. I don’t use the term “neglected” lightly; when he started at the “archive” it was a big windowless room full of largely unmarked and un-viewed reels and videotapes, rotting steadily away. Now, it’s a comprehensive collection of Alaskan moving pictures (that posts some pretty cool stuff on YouTube, so, check that out if you get a chance).
That took a lot of hard work and dedication, of course, but it also took a particular philosophy. Dad started looking through those piles of unknown footage and decided “people need to be able to see this.” He spent about twenty years working to that end, fighting both a terminal lack of funding (not unusual there) and an ingrained institutional tendency to gatekeep, rather than open, access to knowledge.
Many if not most of my personal views and philosophies are derived from my folks — mangled, poorly considered, and failed in execution though they might be. Dad’s work at the archive, then, informed my view of data: why withhold it, when you can make it available to everyone? I’ll certainly cop to acquiring more than my share of less-than-legitimately-sourced media, a practice dating back nearly (if not exactly) twenty years of my own at this point. A lot of that is pedestrian petty theft — primarily popular films and TV shows.
But the stuff that I pride myself on, the stuff that I really put an effort into, are the rarities. Shows that aired for less than a season. Music that’s hard if not impossible to obtain across international borders. Movies obscure verging on unknown. Want to watch a sci-fi hospital drama that aired for three episodes on UPN in 1998? How about a Philippine action flick from 1985? Trying to play a data-breach derived version of the Half-Life 2 beta from 2003? Perhaps you’re after a cassette-only album of your favorite post-punk revival outfit prior to their better-known name change? The more ghostly an item is, the more keen I am to get a copy of it, to hold on to it as best as I’m able. And why? Specifically so I can share it, so I can tell people “hey, check this thing out” and show them something weird, unexpected, and new. To be clear, most of this stuff exists in some form or another, and outfits like the Internet Archive do a far better job than I. But nevertheless, it’s my impulse, my philosophical root when it comes to data — get it, keep it, and most importantly, share it.
NFTs, then, are the precise opposite of this. They represent a seismic shift in the thinking of tech people, a transition from “data wants to be free” to a twenty dollar cover and a two drink minimum. It wasn’t enough that the Internet created more wealth and commerce than possibly imaginable thirty years ago. It wasn’t enough that DRM-laden platforms are now the de-facto standard, and most people pay the equivalent of a cable subscription to enjoy… well, the equivalent of a cable subscription. No, no, that was all too lenient. Best to sell jpegs that a younger, more self-serious version of myself wouldn’t consider for a livejournal icon (even as a joke!) to the vapid rich. After all, it’s harder than ever to source a Lamborghini — why not get the status symbol without the hassle of licensing, insurance, storage and the like?
(The especially tinfoil-hatted part of me even suspects that this is a pilot program, priming people for the idea that they should shift their purchasing habits to the digital as material items become harder to source. But that’s a darkened road to go down some other time.)
Don’t get me wrong, the core idea of crypto makes sense to me; the notion of a digital store of value / record of ownership outside of the control of the state is a verifiably good thing. However, every implementation of it to date is a clusterfuck, and NFTs especially are the griftiest fish in a cash grab-filled sea. It’s unfortunate that’s the direction Silicon Valley has taken as a whole, playing for cash rather than actually trying to impact the world for the better. Maybe things will change down the line. In the interim, well, tell your folks and friends so they don’t get swindled over the shittiest picture of a monkey you’ve ever seen in your life.