WTF is an NFT?
Thousands of years of creation and innovation have led us to the complicated intersection of today. Technology and automation have begun to replace human labor, almost every global citizen is walking around with a supercomputer in their pocket ceaselessly conditioning them, and our bewildered human population is striving to determine how best to adapt to this wildly disorienting and ever-changing world. But the good news is we can look up anything, at any time, in almost any place on Wikipedia. Without a doubt, advancement in technology and computing has in many ways democratized access to information itself. This new age has brought about vast shifts in wealth, access, and capability, with the majority of that immense wealth going to a select group of tech companies and billionaires who conveniently condition and program most of our behavior through their products and services. However, that is for another day. With vast technological advancement comes great and rapid change. Paper currency has been replaced with Venmo tabs and Pavlovian credit card taps, neighborly visits have been replaced with text messages, and art is fleeing the hallowed walls of physical fine art galleries for the pixelated multiverses of digital museums and galleries. As we march towards this strange and uncertain future what is clear is how interwoven and irreversible our merging with technology has become. Non-Fungible Tokens (NFT’s) and crypto fortunes have momentarily captured the attention of seemingly everyone, from your odd cousin living in Nan’s basement to the bullish Wall Street hedge fund manager. But what even is an NFT and can I trust the late-night soapbox speech from my hyper-caffeinated cousin Kyle? Are we witnessing an artistic revolution, returning power to the hands of artists and creatives or is this just another idealistic bubble filled with risky speculation and opportunistic schemers? Like most things in life, NFT’s inhabit the painfully ambiguous realm of grey.