Date
April 2019
Type
PublicationContexte
Actes du colloque de Cerisy Écologie de l’attention et archéologie des médias (juin 2016)
Résumé
La notification, cette forme de communication par fragments, interruptions et redondances s’est renforcée avec l’émergence des terminaux mobiles qui permettent d’accéder et de traiter des données en temps réel. Entre le manque investi par le numérique et la (supposée) saturation d’informations conduisant, pour certains chercheurs, à une crise de l’attention, comment les notifications numériques participent-elles d’une reconfiguration sociotechnique de l’expérience du manque ? Quelles sont les spécificités de ce milieu attentionnel ?
Personnes citées
Date
September 2022
Type
PublicationContexte
Paper written with Guillaume Helleu for the journal AOC, which appeared in September 2022. Translated from French by Aviva Cashmira Kakar.
Résumé
NFTs (non-fungible tokens) appeared in 2017. They are tamper-proof decentralized digital certificates which have gained fame because of their appropriation by the art world. NFTs have attracted a great deal of controversy, and are frequently accused of being speculative, useless and polluting. We propose to examine these polemics, founded for the most part, in order to show that other approaches are possible. In fact, artistic applications are merely one link in the chain, and NFTs cannot be reduced to their mere visible aspect, they require a wider examination of their value systems, distribution chains, and methods of governance.
Date
May 2023
Type
PublicationContexte
Anthony Masure, Guillaume Helleu, “The improvised economics to the Web3,” LSD, no 3, May 2023, pp. 175-183
Résumé
Emerging in 2017, NFT s (Non Fungible Tokens), are un-forgeable, decentralised certificates that have become famous through their use in the art world. While this usage is what has brought them media attention, they actually are simply one part of a far wider technological movement often marketed as “Web3” 1 Appeared with Ethereum as a response to the Web 2.0 of the GAFAM, the Web3 proposes an all-in-one ecosystem: a monetary system (Bitcoin) within an economic system (DeFi) to exchange digital assets (NFT s), the whole managed by a governance system (DAO) using digital identities (DID s).. Web3, or the new order of Web To understand the workings of this new iteration of the Web based on decentralised blockchain 2 The term blockchain refers to a distributed ledger for storing, certifying and sharing information in a decentralised manner. The data is replicated in multiple storage spaces, forming a public chain secured by the addition of the various nodes of the network. This chain is designed to make information unalterable and transactions unfalsifiable. technologies, first we have to review its predecessors. Invented in 1989 by Tim Berners-Lee at the Cern, the Web - which later came to be called Web 1.0 - brought the promise of a utopia where all the world’s scientific knowledge could be shared through simplified publication proto-cols. However, as it turned out, it was too technically complex for use by the general public. This “read-only mode” allowing for nothing more than the consulta-fion of documents gave rise to corresponding marketing strategies for devices such as the laptops, smartphones and modems that occupy such a central place in our daily lives and yet were not conceived as servers suitable to function as Web sites able to store and manage information. This problem of access was addressed by the Web 2.0 that arose in the 2000s with the development of participative platforms such as social media (Flickr, MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) where anyone can create an account and share information on a mass scale. The main problem with the “platformisation” of the Web paradigm that predominates today resides in the non-distribution of the value produced by Web users and its increasing centralisation. Reacting against the hegemony of the GAFAM s 3 The term blockchain refers to a distributed ledger for storing, certifying and sharing information in a decentralised manner. The data is replicated in multiple storage spaces, forming a public chain secured by the addition of the various nodes of the network. This chain is designed to make information unalterable and transactions unfalsifiable. (and their Asian avatars), the renewed promise of decentralisation raised by the Web3 could restore ownership and control over their data to ordinary Web users. Five key principles will mark this historic shift: 1 – A monetary system Bitcoin 4 Bitcoin (฿, 2009) is a decentralised digital protocol that allows transactions of monetary values independently of traditional financial institutions and fat currencies. It was invented by a person, or group of anonymous people, using the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto. (2009) and other cryptocurrencies will play a key role. 2 – An economic system D e F i (Decentralised Finance) can be defined as a financial transaction environment that no longer requires traditional intermediaries such as brokers, exchanges and banks. Various D e F i protocols like Compound (2019) and Uniswap (2018) create gateways between traditional and decentralised economies through the introduction of “stablecoins” (Tether, 2014; Dai, 2017; Binance USD, 2018), value tokens 5 A token, or authentication token, is a digital representation of a value (currency, social share, artwork, etc.) verified in a blockchain. based on Fiat 6 The value of a fat currency is imposed by a state in an identified territory, and its management is entrusted to a central bank. For example, the value and distribution of the Euro is managed by the European Central Bank (ECB), while the dollar is managed by the United States Federal Reserve (FED). The word fiat is determinist. It comes from Latin and means, in the imperative mode, “Let it be done.” currencies. They make it possible to exchange these state-issued currencies without going through traditional channels (SWIFT), and they function almost instantaneously. Working 24/7 and almost impossible to stop, by January 2022 D e F i represented a market worth more than 200 billion dollars. 3 – A property system NFT s can transform any digital entity into merchandise. In the field of art, the best-known example is CryptoPunks, 10,000 files containing images (originally 24 × 24 pixels) distributed without charge over the Ethereum 7 Ethereum (2015) is a decentralised, collaborative exchange platform, originally envisioned by Vitalik Buterin as an upgrade to Bitcoin. Ethereum extends the principles of Bitcoin to move from a currency to a configurable value system, particularly via the use of smart contracts. network. Thanks to blockchain technology, there can be thousands of copies of a single CryptoPunk 8 CryptoPunks (2017) are a famous collection of NFT s representing computer-generated pixelated characters. meme, but only one of them contains a digital signature and thus has value. 4 – A governance system A project launched in April 2016 called the DAO (Decentralised Autonomous Organisation) marked the appearance of new kinds of governance that prevent fraud and corruption through previously-established rules and smart contracts 9 Smart contracts enable value to be programmed by automating the triggering of actions within a blockchain and recording the results.. While DAO s make governmental processes such as voting and the approval and execution of decisions more fluid, they raise possible concerns insofar as they can become substitutes for traditional state functions, regulatory bodies and so on justice systems, associations, unions, etc.). 5 – An identity system DID s (Decentralised Identifiers) are sure to become a major issue in the coming decades. In a world where the concept of identity has never been so much brought into question and the profiling carried out by GAFAMs so problematic, the need for a new system of identity has become obvious. Web 1.0’s traditional authentif-cation mechanisms (email and password) have been replaced, to some degree, bysociallogins (Facebook Connect, 2008; Google Sign In, 2015; Sign in with Apple, 2019), all of which entrain the problems inherent in Web 2.0 (targeted advertising, data capture, dependence on private actors, etc.). In contrast, Web3 offers new forms of online authentification through the use of wallets such as MetaMask 10 MetaMask (2016) is a digital wallet of cryptocurrencies and tokens that allows interaction with many decentralised applications and environments. (2016). These kinds of decentralised and user-owned protocols provide for a better interoperability of data while allowing users to control what they want to share. Their possible integration into Instagram and Twitter shows that we are in a transitional phase between Web 2.0 and Web3, with no guarantee, at this point, that the problems Web3 is supposed to solve will not be replaced by even more serious risks. Towards improvised economies? ? In contrast to the traditional economy where only sovereign states (or central banks) are authorised to issue currency, Web3 technologies make it possible for anyone (with the necessary technical skills) to not only create digital spaces, but even program value systems and thus economic models based on the principles of already-existing innovations like local currencies, SCOPS (Cooperative and Participative Societies) and participative financing (crowdfunding). The latter has been updated through the use of NFT s, with initiatives like Stoner Cats (2021) - an animated multi-episode entertainment series with access limited to owners of special tokens, and Hamlet Within (2022) - a documentary by the British avantgarde filmmaker Ken McMullen sold as an NFT on the Cineverse network and divided into several “unique” parts only available to token buy-ers. As McMullen explains, the artistic model (of movies) will become totally participative, thus changing the aesthetic vocabulary of the twenty-first century so that game thinking becomes predominate. In this respect, the still unstable “play-to-earn” paradigm pop-ularised by video games like Axie Infinity (2018) gives players back most of the rewards earned by the sale of in-game collectables. More generally speaking, Web3 creates new ways to use these technologies, greater economic creativity and even a kind of legal design 11 Legal design is a practice that aims to introduce and facilitate the understanding of law to all. User-centered, legal design is by definition multidisciplinary and collaborative.. Smart contracts, for example, are NFT-associated scripts that offer, among other things, the automatic distribution of the initial gains and profits from future resales, accruing either to the artist or the designer thus updating the concept of artist resale rights), or for donations to institutions such as NGO s as well as foundations that produce open-source applications like those found on the NFT platform Teia.art. These smart contracts can also serve unexpected purposes, such as allowing a piece of property to be divided into multiple fragments, setting a ceiling on resale prices, and bringing about a process of deflation based on time lapsed or external factors. Here we are approaching the farthest frontiers of the art world where artworks are produced according to rules governing the relations between humans and non-human entities. For instance, Nouns DAO (2021) is a treasury financed by the number of daily sales of an NFT. Owners can vote to use this money to support all sorts of projects. Botto (2021) is an art robot whose taste is conditioned by community members’ weekly votes. The result of this AI heuristics is automatically put up for sale as an NFT. In light of all these examples, it’s probable that the next few years will provide opportunities to study the tensions between long-standing capitalist logics (which readily appropriated the anarchist logic of Bitcoin) and new “improvised economies” that, while still embryonic, may yield more redistributive outcomes.
Notions
Personnes citées
Objets mentionnés
Date
June 2016
Type
ConférenceContexte
Conférence donnée avec Saul Pandelakis au colloque scientifique « Archéologie des médias et écologies de l’attention », dir. Yves Citton, Emmanuel Guez, Martial Poirson et Gwenola Wagon, Cerisy-la-Salle. Cette conférence a été redifusée sur les sites Web de France Culture et de La Forge Numérique (MRSH de l’université de Caen – Normandie).
Résumé
Nous souhaitons examiner « le passage d’un modèle économique (de l’investissement) au modèle écologique (de la relation au milieu) ». Les programmes numériques peuvent-ils être ou devenir le lieu d’une écologie attentionnelle contribuant à une « écologie [plus large] de l’environnement artificiel » ? Comment concevoir, par le design, la place de l’attention humaine au sein des machines numériques ?
Notions
Personnes citées
Objets mentionnés
Médias