Dialogue

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Issue 369

Mona Lisas and mad hatters

All the rightly sceptical discussions of NFTs in recent Edge issues have had the unfortunate consequence of making me think more about NFTs. Specifically, why do they seem (at least to me) so completely devoid of cultural or social value? No doubt it’s partly because of the horrible ‘cryptobros’ that swarm them, the anarchocapitalist undertones, and the negative environmental consequences, but there must be something more fundamental.

Obviously I don’t have the full answer, but it seems to do with a combination of factors: effort and skill, constitution, and ultimately a preoccupation with the marketplace over the thing that’s being marketed.

Most NFTs that enjoy Internet fame seem to require little effort or skill to make. Perhaps I’d feel differently about NFTs if blockchains were flinging around Mona Lisas, but they seem like the digital equivalent of a penny arcade dispensing capsule toys.

Perhaps the easiest way to get across the constitution question is to ask what distinguishes, say, a statue from the clay it’s made from. There seems to be a pretty big gap between the two. Some of it might relate back to effort and skill; we might say a statue is the exertion of skilled effort upon clay, for example. But however we choose to argue about the gap, intuitively it’s there.