Hi everyone, April is coming to a close. I'm finishing up #writual, a writing experiment I'm doing with my writing group. Each weekday in April we wrote a 250-300 word essay. I'll be reflecting on this experiment for tomorrow's #writual.
This Week:
Experiment:
Last week's idea is this week's experiment! I will be starting my first course club around Jack Butcher's course, Build Once, Sell Twice. I'll be keeping a journal here.
Something Interesting:
Something that I've been thinking about are truisms that just aren't true. John Luttig wrote an essay on "How Timeless is Timeless Advice".
He goes over conventional wisdom on news, buying houses, rainy day funds, stable jobs, traveling, settling down, and talking to strangers. I like how he frames each with a counter-narrative that is less intuitive than the "timely advice."
Idea of the Week:
An NFT search engine combined with NFTs as digital proof-of-creation
Before modern times, you would use a seal to signify authorization. Different cultures used different devices. In China, they used a "chop," a stone seal usually adorned with your name. In medieval Europe, they used signet rings, rings with your coat-of-arms. You would seal a document with wax and use the signet ring to make an impression. Other cultures used similar instruments.
I see NFTs as the modern equivalent. You can take anything digital that you create and put a proof-of-creation on it. All this needs is a search engine that can index these NFTs. Apps could be built to read and filter. Information would truly be decentralized.
This would also work in place of patents. You could document your intellectual property instead of a patent claim and the search would be like a search for prior art.
Another use case would be collaborative endeavors. You could build something using someone else's original idea and everyone would get credit for what they contributed. I'm not sure how Github works, but I imagine it would be a distributed Github.
I'm also imagining that creative works could be collaboratively created. You could create your own fictional works in a universe and attribution would go to the universe creator. Imagine creating new Star Wars material based only on the Original Trilogy. Or coming up with an alternative ending to Game of Thrones.
Questions, suggestions, complaints? DM me at @chr_iswong. Feedback welcome.
If you enjoyed this newsletter, please share it with a friend or two. And feel free to send anything you find interesting to me!
Have a great week,
Chris
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