NFT’s, Digital Art & Digital Media

NFT’s

Non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, are the latest technological advancement in “cryptocurrency” to go mainstream. Recently Christie’s auction house sold the first-ever NFT artwork (a collection of images by digital artist Beeple) for a whopping $69.3 million NFT’s have attracted the world’s attention. What exactly is an NFT? In the simplest terms, NFTs transform digital (non tangible) works of art and other collectibles into one-of-a-kind, verifiable assets that can be traded on the blockchain.

Any “Digitizable” item can become a permanent NFT. For example the first tweet Jack Dorsey ever sent is now an NFT (Worth 2+ Million Dollars) Unlike other forms of data stored on Blockchain, NFT’s are non-interchangeable. This means they are not reproducible. The most common iterations of these assets are things like digital media, such as photos, videos, and even audio. An owner of an NFT possesses a digital ledger granted to provide a public certificate of authenticity for that specific item.

NFTs are de-centralized and provide ownership of a particular item to the certificate holder.  It is this function that will lead to the complete replacement of many business transactions that typically require a middleman. Things like deeds, titles, records, movies, medical documents, vaccine records, event tickets and more will move to digital ownership. And because they are decentralized on Blockchain this will theoretically provide the owner a more secure method of ownership in addition to simplified transactions.

In the near future we will see traditionally hard (Paper) documents replaced by NFT’s. Things such as diplomas, domain names, patents, trademarks, bonds, insurance policies, hunting licenses, permits, passports, drivers licenses & visas will be replaced with easily verifiable NFT tokens. Also no intermediaries are required to verify these tokens, a government official, potential employer or educator could verify your “credentials” on the spot for free.

Digital Art

Much like other forms of physical documents traditional printed, painted and drawn art will almost completely cease to exist only to be replaced by NFT’s. In 2020 nearly 90% of all new art created was digital. In addition we will see the rise of both Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality art (more on this in Part 4) creating immersive journeys where the viewer can experience the artwork utilizing a headset, glasses or implants.

I fully expect priceless works of physical art the likes of Van Gough and Picaso to be digitized into an NFT and then destroyed. Artwork of the future will be displayed in smart frames or smart walls using IOT technology (More on that in part 14) and connected to the stream. Your art collection will be ALL digital and accessible from anywhere giving you the ability to display it whenever and wherever you wish.

The pandemic has all but destroyed most museums and many art galleries, many will likely not recover and the ones that do are not likely to have a bright future.

Digital Media

In 2013 I wrote “As our society moves closer to the virtual/digital and further from the human interaction of the physical world we will see a significant decrease in communal experience centers such as museums, movie theaters, concerts, event halls, churches and seminars.” In the near future anything where the experience or content can be delivered digitally will eventually be all but eliminated by NFT’s and digital media.

Indeed we are already nearing the end of things like DVD movies, Video Game Disk’s and Blu-Rays. Everything is readily available for streaming or download in an instant. While this certainly has many advantages such as no more lost or scratched disks, always having the latest version of your favorite game or the latest episode of your favorite show there are many hidden cons to not having a physical “Disk”. Recently I have discovered numerous older movies and shown that are simply not available for digital acquisition or streaming because of political correctness. Even more frequently I have found some of my favorite classics to be modified, dubbed or missing content that is no longer considered socially acceptable. This behavior make me question the motives of those pushing for the elimination of physical media.

Books

What does the future hold for paper writings, book, pamphlets, guides and so on? While I don’t think books will ever be truly eliminated (Partly because people like me) in the near future traditional print media will be replaced with a combination of E-books, NFT’s and audio books with features unlike anything currently imaginable.

Future “books” will be bundled with soundtracks, musical leitmotifs, 3-D graphics, augmented reality and streaming video. They’ll be enhanced with social bookmarking, online dating, and alerts from geo-networking apps whenever someone in your locality purchases the same book as you, literally anything so you don’t have to actually read the “book”.

Like other forms of media mentioned earlier the books deemed not socially acceptable or otherwise disruptive my not be available at all, still others may be gradually edited and changed to become more “Acceptable”. I have already seen several instances where new copies classic books have been edited for content thereby changing the authors intent and this trend is likely to get worse as time progresses.

Entire libraries will be stored on a single device or perhaps “in the cloud” accessible from anywhere and will remain in a constant state of evolution. Imagine all of your books and media constantly being “Updated” and revised in real time subject to the whims and political persuasions of the authors and distributors.

Speaking for myself I have begun the arduous process of collecting classic films and literature of importance for the sake of originality and the preservation of history for my progeny.

Update 02/10/2022

The first real property has sold with the deed issued as an NFT

Gulfport home first in nation sold as NFT; buyer pays $655K (baynews9.com)