Decentralization of the music industry through the use of Blockchain technologies is already underway. This is the beginning of a revolution with broad implications, one that will likely be as significant as the development of the internet itself. Bitcoin and value But do you know the mechanics of what makes crypto-currencies such as Bitcoin valuable ? Bitcoin is a digital asset unlike any other. Consider for a moment your favourite internet meme – infinitely replicable. At any one time there could exist innumerable copies of it across computers all around the world. Figure 1. Prototypical Meme Bitcoin is different. The reason Bitcoins are valuable is that they are unique digital assets. There’s no one who can ‘Ctrl-c + Ctrl-v’ a Bitcoin into existence, as I did when I copied the meme from Figure 1 into this article. Blockchain is the technology that enforces the distinctive (one of a kind) property of each Bitcoin. The ability to create and send a unique digital asset represents something extraordinarily meaningful in virtual reality. We could go so far as to consider it a technological paradigm shift. As this technology becomes more widespread, it will transform the way we interact with each other on the internet. For example, consider the arts. Figure 2. The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction “Even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be.” — Walter Benjamin (1892–1940) Some 100 years ago, the German cultural critic Walter Benjamin published a treatise called ‘Das Kunstwerk im Zeitalter seiner technischen Reproduzierbarkeit’ or ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’. The focal point of the essay describes the capacity to clone an […]
