One of my favorite quotes is from Arthur C. Clarke and recites:

“Any sufficiently advanced technology must be undistinguishable from magic”

And it sums up my whole approach to technology regarding metaphysics and self-growth. Technology is the body of tools we download into existence to help create new worlds, shift our perception, and elevate our purpose through inspiration. Properly implemented, they serve as an extension of our existence and should be nothing but an invisible ally that silently helps us reach our best life.

Introduction. The Digital Dimension is Key to Our Development

Information technologies are laying the ground for not only a Digital Experience, but a Digital Existence, and that should not scare us at all. Rather than a threat to our humanity, I regard the digital domain as a self-projecting dimension that allows us to rediscover the divinity within, stating ourselves as pure creators (more here).

Let’s reflect on the role of the Digital among the Physical towards the purposes of human transcendence. If we think of the Digital as a Space that is analogous to the Physical dimensions, we can easily discern two of its purposes:

1. Become a seamless communication and bonding channel
2. Establish a fractal self-conscious dimension to our image and likeness.

The first has become extremely obvious during the past decades. Digital communications have stitched us together, filling in the gaps between physical isolation, and allowing for decentralized presence. The ability to pack our goods and emotions into digital packages that surf the ether nearly flawlessly, and reach any part of the world has permitted our heartbeats to synchronize and brought humans closer to their divine expressions of omniscience and omnipresence, let alone providing for a space of radical self reflection.

The second remains more humbly hidden behind the construction noises of our self-understanding, but I personally think it is way more important to follow up with. If we regard the digital world, the virtual reality, or as we like to call it now, the Metaverse as a self-constructed reality where to project and create a human-like consciousness that shares, builds, and inhabits by itself, it is not strange to say that we are indeed reproducing our own consciousness. And what is that if not an opportunity for radical self-reflection AND a ultimate proof of the seed of divinity within?

What is slowly being built as a rough representation of reality for us to interact with seamlessly, is nothing but an extension of our cognition, our perception reaching out into the void, thirsty for expansion. Such a place holds space for utopian revelations too, where the Good gets bigger, faster, and stronger, where creation powers multiply endlessly, and manifesting becomes the norm. Such a place allows us to redefine our sharing infrastructure and reorganize the different layers of existence both in the physical and the digital domains.

It is then not strange to highlight the importance to start honoring their interaction and applying responsible actions in both. Tools to construct healthy physical and digital spaces are needed, as well as bridging technologies that afford the most utopian and developing sides of our spirit.

One. Blockchain, the Infrastructure for Decentralisation and Digital Realness.

Why does Blockchain matter then?

Blockchain is “just” a technology that works on an infrastructure level, i.e. on how to store, share and validate digital data. It can be the basement of a digital world in charge of organizing how data is stored with an important particularity: It does not rely on centralized structures to secure the information. That means that whatever is stored (i.e. created, imagined, and conceived) is securely existing without permission of a few, nor control of a chosen, but only under surveillance of the whole collective.

Therefore Blockchain is one of those tools that point at a utopian existence, where digital value can exist (stored) and be exchanged freely and at full disposal. Whether this value is a currency, a good, an idea, or a decision, Blockchain can work at both, the value and governance level, designing new structures and ways through which information, data, experiences, and cognition are stored, accessed, and distributed. It allows for new paradigms of physical/digital human organization.

How is this magic?

Think of it not as the magic created by an intentional spell, but the magic that emerges in oneself through being in the right inspiring, heart-filling and spirit-lifting environment. If the environment is ready, if the ground rules and life infrastructure affords for a light-hearted existence, it will emerge. And this is how Blockchain promises a spirit-filling world, a magical living, by being the rule holder, the protocol that ensures fairness, opportunity, and collective harmony (through micro/macro and self/whole empowering consensus methods — more on this here).

Blockchain is the earth level, if the earth is not properly treated and design, nothing solid can be built on top. Blockchain is a step into decentralized infrastructures, designed bottom-up to deepen spirit-digital connections, and it is slowly giving birth to useful applications.

Two. Cryptocurrencies and NFTs, two Blockchain applications that change everything.

But how can we be part of the change through Blockchain? Let’s focus on two of its most used applications

1. Cryptocurrencies — Revolutionising money and value exchange through de-materialization, decentralization, and de-blooding of currencies.

Cryptocurrencies are a concept that needs well-cared review because they escape our standard understanding of money. Cryptos are assets, digital assets that live in this Blockchain protocol. They not only live and remain stored there, but they are native to it. They are a core part of Blockchains, Blockchains need cryptocurrencies to exist, for they are the reward mechanism through which the protectors of the ledger (data records), the miners or stakers, are incentivized with.

How do they transcend and change the concept of money? Yes, they are a proxy for value, yes they can be exchanged and transport fast and securely, and yes they can be designed to avoid inflation (securing its intrinsic value through scarcity), but they are too an intrinsic part of the most primitive value layer of the network, meaning that they hold part of the mission and vision of the venture at hand. Differently from FIAT currencies, cryptocurrencies are deeply embedded and inseparable from the community, so called network.

Cryptocurrencies are an off the grid way to share value, but also allow for tokenization of a culture’s values, and not just the economic ones. When a company created a vision and mobilised energy and people towards that, it hat to draw from the existing value layer (FIAT) that is normally super allien to its core. Now, with crypto, the mission and vision of a company can be backed by a sovereign, free, off-grid currency. Whatsmore, a mission can be tokenized and integrated throughout all the value creation and exchange processes that take place.

The use of cryptocurrencies are a change to sanitize the value layers that we build upon.

2. NFTs — Revolutionising things, aesthetics, and culture fragmentation through de-materialization, decentralization, and poeticization of assets.

Money is a representation of value, it is just an abstraction. This value is ultimately carried through the product of creation, whether those are objects, ideas, cultures, or inspirations. What Blockchain does for money with cryptocurrencies, it does for these products of creation with NFTs. NFTs are tokenizations of an asset, wether that is tangible or intangible, and with them we are now able to de-materialise our objects, art, ideas, cultures, and inspiration maintaining its value untouched, free from uneven power schemas and packaged as aesthetic pills. Sounds like a jackpot.

NFTs are an opportunity to digitalise objects (of whatever kind), make them scarce, valuable and exchangeable. These digital objects become ownable independently of its platform (read that again), so justifiable and sellable, which bridges the gap between the digital and the physical dimensions. For the first time, digital objects (that can be represented with whatever aesthetics, hence its poetic properties) become as valuable as physical, and we can program them to deliver whatever we want: appreciation, access, utility or whatever we can imagine, both in digital physical spaces.

Let’s clarify: now a piece of digital art can be owned, sold, and kept, protected from falsification. Now a concept or vision can be tokenized, represented with an image, video or sound, and distributed for fundraising or community creation. Now a physical land can be fragmented and represented by digital parcels tokenized as NFTs to distribute ownership. Now a digital avatar image can become a digital identity that grants one access to digital or physical spaces.

NFTs are a wholesome digitalization of things, augmenting their capabilities while keeping their role and value in real life.

We navigate an era where we are teaching ourselves how to be more in contact with nature, through our own tools (physical, mental, and digital).

We build tools for the new earth, and tools show us the new earth too.

By Will Barleycorn
Art-based Researcher, Data-AI-SignalProcessing Engineer. I study ~rhythms through aesthetics.
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