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NET Society is unraveling the latest in digital art, crypto, AI, and tech. Join us for fresh insights and bold perspectives as we tap into wild, thought-provoking conversations. By: Derek Edwards (glitch marfa / collab+currency), Chris Furlong (starholder, LAO + Flamingo DAO), and Aaaron Wright & Priyanka Desai (Tribute Labs)
00;00;00;00 - 00;00;17;17
Aaron
I guess we're all living in the shadow of the Habsburg Empire.
00;00;17;22 - 00;00;22;26
Chris
Wasn't that obvious? Don't you feel the Hapsburg is looming over you every day?
00;00;23;04 - 00;00;45;05
Aaron
I don't, I don't, but it seems like we may be excited to have one, one, three here today to talk about the Habsburg Empire and a whole bunch of different things. The future of art. I was excited when one three to see the Ethereum Foundation finally highlight some of the great creators and artists in the space, and I was glad that some of your work got a shout out.
00;00;45;08 - 00;00;53;07
Aaron
I don't know if you caught that yesterday or yesterday, but I did. That was great. I thought that was amazing that we're finally able to talk about it.
00;00;53;12 - 00;01;04;12
Yeah, I'll just say this is our first, kind of like public acknowledgment of something in this direction, right? I don't think I've heard much in the direction of anything about art or culture from an official of Etherium.
00;01;04;15 - 00;01;33;10
Aaron
Yeah, completely. And I think it's odd because that really is the ecosystem's strength. Right. And I do I still have the firm belief that when we zoom out, you know, five, ten years, there's going to be much, much more usefulness for Ethereum when it comes to art, culture and media and the financialization of it in part, rather than like all these financial primitives, I think folks are going to get a lot more excited about those aspects as opposed to, you know, the next great lending platform or whatnot.
00;01;33;16 - 00;01;52;11
Yeah, I have two, 2 or 3 responses. That one is, as a trader, like so many people know, I just I don't I can't live in meme coins. You know, I've tried of dabble but you know, NFTs and and things like art. It's it's not a zero sum game. Right. Like I actually want to own and collect a lot of NFTs.
00;01;52;11 - 00;02;14;23
And then FTX culture kind of capsized into meme coins and it became this, did you see like a zero sum flipping game for a lot of a lot of the culture involved there. And I just always thought that was so tragic because it's like, okay, you have a a network native network or a native to the like, Ethereum network itself, artifacts that people actually want as an and when I buy Pokemon cards, I'm on pure liquidity.
00;02;14;26 - 00;02;33;07
I buy them because I love the art. I love having physical object. I want to own it. And so, you know, there's a lot of NFT as I collected that I, you know, I never in my life would expect that I would sell them if they'd be a financial instrument or something like that. Right. And so then to watching that culture kind of, I don't know, it's kind of gone underground a bit.
00;02;33;07 - 00;02;50;28
But yeah, I think that's really. Yeah. Under under appreciated. The other thing is I said, you know, I mean self bias. But you know, I think collections like Autoglass, I think Terraform, it's this criteria. I think he's turned Ethereum into Bitcoin and people didn't really notice this. Like I think as a result of collections like that, Ethereum is going to effectively run forever.
00;02;50;28 - 00;03;25;06
It might in worst case scenario, it's running in the basement of some museum or something, right? Like so. I think those internalized Ethereum, and I don't think that organization has really understood that. And then the last thing is, I do actually think their roadmap and the other direction, their roadmap is something that artists have paid like effectively zero attention to, which is the tools of scaling, like the raw materials that, you know, you could call it L2 right now, but that's a that's a very early term to describe the art supplies that, the kind of patterns that have evolved recently and in my mind, and I've been here for 11 years and in my
00;03;25;06 - 00;03;42;15
mind, because Bitcoin, Ethereum and I've been calling it something like a third era, and this third era would be it's a, it's a mouthful, but it's something like arbitrary computer program artworks. You know, that can kind of like float and treat aetherium like a cultural settlement layer, but with a real crypto economic link as a result of these patterns.
00;03;42;15 - 00;03;59;08
So it's like crypto economic programs that sell to Ethereum that are artworks. And what that makes is something that I've wanted for, you know, when Ethereum comes out and I read the web page and it says World Computer, I don't take it seriously because I'm like, the computer is not very powerful, like I can only do. It's a Gameboy in my mind later, not even.
00;03;59;10 - 00;04;16;09
Right. And I'm making much more advanced programs. And so I'm like, oh, what kind of world computer is this? I can't do my work on it. And then I didn't embrace the constraint ness of it at the time, which was a mistake, but the constraints of almost lifted like intimidatingly so, or like they're listed to such a degree and artists can't think these sorts yet, basically.
00;04;16;09 - 00;04;42;17
And what I think is then computing art has a market now, like as a result of this kind of the 2021 and on NFT boom, which I think is this kind of just like inception in the imagination of people, that you could have a kind of market that's, you know, for a digital artifact or digital artworks or things like this, but that the current state of it, the paradigm that it exists in trading mostly existing media forms and not really interrogating, like the idea of a crypto economic program, which is what the substrate is.
00;04;42;17 - 00;05;00;12
You know, I think that's a very early culture in it. And I think the horizons of artists who can make crypto economic programs as artworks, you suddenly can just root around everything. You know, I I'll shut up in about 30s. I just I didn't have a place in the art world. The art world told me, just wait 80 years, you know, just wait in line.
00;05;00;12 - 00;05;20;29
And when you're dead in 80 years will give you your morsels of acknowledgment. You know, I watched the net artists, the post-internet artists, etc. not really get, you know, like they're still doing adjunct work and they're still like they're in a, oh, you're in a gallery. Cool. But you make like, I don't know, $10,000 a quarter from your gallery, like, if you're a superstar, if you're a quote unquote superstar as a quote unquote digital artist, right.
00;05;21;02 - 00;05;36;01
As in like, go die in a hole and wait 80 years. Which is absurd because the internet just, you know, look at the simple. Net art diagram. You know, just the art happens here. You can, the art can, and that means a dozen different things, but you can round around these kinds of things. But there wasn't enough of an economy for it.
00;05;36;01 - 00;05;55;08
And now there is. And now you also have, with this third era, these, these patents that artists just haven't even like, opened their mind to yet. You had like a whole new you have computing artists have a market. Agnes Martin has to be a paint painter because there's a, a social, you know, social reality, like a financial social reality, a context or a discourse.
00;05;55;14 - 00;06;05;27
And now I think you have the inception of the possibility of that for a computing artist. And that didn't exist in the world ten years ago. And so, yeah, and that all booms off Ethereum and they should really take more notice.
00;06;06;00 - 00;06;06;07
Chris
Yeah.
00;06;06;07 - 00;06;27;01
Aaron
And I'm completely looking forward to that future. I do think that that point you said just a minute or two ago like that eath became kind of a store of value. I do think that that's like the meta theme, of why there's such a kind of internal discussion and some consternation just related to the future of Ethereum.
00;06;27;01 - 00;06;47;27
Aaron
I think that that's like the metamorphosis that Ethereum is going through, and it's a similar metamorphosis. I think that Bitcoin went through where initially it was conceived of as like a payment system, not a world computer, and then it increasingly became a store of value. And I do feel like we're at a similar inflection point for Ethereum. And that's created some disillusionment.
00;06;47;27 - 00;07;04;10
Aaron
And it's also created, I think, some conversation. But I do think in a year or two will be obvious that that eath probably is the best store of value out of all the blockchain based networks. I thought, that's super interesting. I don't know, what do you think about that? Does that feel right to you? One, two and three.
00;07;04;16 - 00;07;26;24
I don't know how to think about store value with Ethereum. It's just so you know, it's just absurd. Does anybody you know, bitcoins are kind of pet rock. It's like the ultimate meme coin. Just Ethereum has so obviously always been superior as a site for exploring like the possibilities of what you can do in this. So, you know, it's and it's still also you.
00;07;26;27 - 00;07;44;04
Yeah. There's things like Solana, and there's some kind of things out on the periphery that could be interesting. But to me it still feels like the only it's a place where you build stuff. It's a place where you build and experiment with an internet of value. And so to me, I don't know about Ethereum as a token itself, as a store of value.
00;07;44;04 - 00;08;05;08
That's always been hard for me to think about. But, and maybe I'm not refuting what you're saying, but to me, the cultural objects on it. Right. Like, again, the things that are very long minded and real, and especially the things that will like stand longer scrutiny. So there's a lot of like local culture inside of crypto that's kind of King made artists that, you know, it has a fondness for people's friends and, and things like that.
00;08;05;08 - 00;08;24;14
And that's real. It's it's own local culture. But then I think there are a handful of things in crypto that kind of bleed out into, like outside of it's biodome. I always call it this kind of inbred biodome conversation with Matto. I think that, like terminology came out because it kind of like, you know, and that's cool because it wants to be its own local culture, but it's sort of like self-assemble to a certain influencer class.
00;08;24;14 - 00;08;45;10
And, you know, it's got there's these incentives that kind of I think it kind of has kind of local maxes and its ability to assess, say, excellence or, you know, I always say about things like art history, but the good news is you can exit the biodome back into crypto, right? Like, even if there were kind of some kind of, you know, premature, tyrannical local Max culture in it.
00;08;45;10 - 00;09;19;27
Well, one that culture is its own culture and it's local. And it can do that, of course. But then people who don't fit into the logic of what's like legible to that, that specific group could actually just come here and do art history. Like, how do you like permission? Honestly. Like you don't you don't need the the upper tier echelon influencers permission to come just table flip their whole culture and to kind of do like a more, I don't know, sort of not just serious but like a more a deeper address of, of the kind of work that might actually turn out to be like art history and computing.
00;09;19;27 - 00;09;39;26
And, and now there's any you pay it, you don't have to, like, starve and try to eat your likes or make, you know, there's make these jokes about, like, a post it like a Molly Altman. Is this post internet artist, right. But Molly Ormond still has to exist in the gallery system. Like maybe Molly Altman could do like, a mr. beast style, like Netflix show or, you know, hamburger pop ups or something, you know.
00;09;39;26 - 00;09;57;03
But basically what I'm saying is in, in post internet, you know, you can't eat your likes. You understand implicitly. The internet is where art happens. It's the art city. You address it really seriously, but you still don't have a market, and then you're still told to like go die basically by the gallery system or museums or institution ality.
00;09;57;03 - 00;10;13;04
You're still told like, and it's absurd because I don't know, just since the Million Dollar homepage, it's just like obvious if a bunch of people on the internet pay you a dollar, you can live and be an artist. So finally, so this is the thing that, you know, this is the there are many utopian or kind of utopian possibilities, right?
00;10;13;06 - 00;10;33;24
You know, openings. It doesn't mean it's egalitarian, doesn't mean every artist on earth suddenly, you know, is given caviar and all this, it's still it's still brutal competition and all this. But what it does mean is, if you were an artist who had something unique, but it was not going to be legible to the trad institutionally, now you can exit that you there's there's a and and you have to be able to surf and navigate.
00;10;33;24 - 00;10;40;00
Right. You know it I kind of did it by accident almost. It's a long story, but yeah, if you take all this very seriously, how.
00;10;40;02 - 00;10;40;29
Aaron
Did you do it? By accident.
00;10;41;04 - 00;10;58;20
Well, I have this collector brain disease. So, you know, I grew up with, magic cards, like many, many people and, you know, trading cards, that kind of thing. And there was this event early in my life that was like a big event. And someone gave me a really, like, rare kind of at the time, like expensive, like a, you know, like a $90 magic card.
00;10;58;23 - 00;11;13;29
And it was kind of meant to, like, take my mind off this, this event and then, you know, so as I get a little older, though, magic cards are kind of uncool. I'm, I'm sort of embarrassed, you know, like, I'm selling my magic cards. I don't want these childish things. And I'm like. And as an adult that I'm like, oh, I'll never have that card again.
00;11;13;29 - 00;11;37;19
Selling that was such a mistake. Like, sure, I could buy a copy. The other thing was the card went up in price. So much that like when I realized this, I couldn't even afford a copy. Second of all, I was like, oh, I'll never have that specific one. Like, technically, cards are sort of fungible, but no, like, there was like something very personal, important to me about this specific, not just like, you know, a card I could buy any copy of, but the exact copy I had, and I'll never have that again.
00;11;37;19 - 00;11;54;19
So, you know, when I finally and I saw Cryptopunks when they launch and all this, I didn't click with them. And, I started I finally pay attention, you know, end of 2020 really like January 2021. It's the most expensive thing I ever bought. You know, it's like a very large percentage of my net worth. But I buy this wild white straight off the Marvel abs.
00;11;54;19 - 00;12;13;27
Dibs. I send them a very nice email. I'm like, okay, I'm gonna put in a bid. And then it kicks off all these other bids. Dev punks and, and I get this punk and I'm like, okay, cool. I'm buying this because, you know, I, like I learned already to never sell Ethereum, you know, so my more of my origin story here is, I was a broke artist and poor, you know, could have had jobs but protected my mind in my time.
00;12;13;27 - 00;12;31;02
So, you know, when if you're in launches, I know what it is, but I $500 in my bank account actually, you know, okay. That's one bitcoin. And so you can pay one bitcoin for 2000 Ethereum. Well I think and I'm also like oh Ethereum. But if it gets expensive people won't be able to develop for it. So it's probably not going to go up in value a bunch.
00;12;31;04 - 00;12;47;13
But it's very interesting. I'll buy $100 worth the way you might buy like an Apple developer account, right? To be allowed to put a program on your iPhone at sucks. And so I put $100 into a serum. Genesis. Crowdsale. And then, you know, over time that goes up. I learned, well, you never, ever sell Ethereum.
00;12;47;13 - 00;13;01;18
You know, you never sell Bitcoin, these kinds of things. Me parting with any Ethereum like crypto punk. The small it sounds like I have a lot of theory, a ton of money. I still don't even in 2021 at this point. Right. So I buy this wild and and I realize, you know, and I buy it like, oh, maybe someday this will go up in price.
00;13;01;18 - 00;13;13;28
I think it's going to hold this value. I like it as art, and it's this kind of interesting balance across all this things. And then like a week later, I'm like, I can never sell this like never in my life. Can I sell, you know, like never. Right. So like that card, like, if I sell this one, I'll never have it again.
00;13;14;04 - 00;13;27;09
I want this forever. I better buy another one so that I can sell that one to pay for this one. And then I have two. And I'm like, I never want to sell a second one. I never buy two. These feel like they're going up. I better buy two more and I'll sell those two. So, you know, I'm this hybrid.
00;13;27;09 - 00;13;47;02
I wanted the objects and I, I'm also a trader, right? I'm not trading coins. I'm not trying to like, you know, play some. I'm not buying something that I think no one could ever want. That goes to zero. Nobody is going to die keeping their dog with hat, right? I mean, I could be wrong, like maybe dog with hat becomes some network state community something something, you know, bubble.
00;13;47;05 - 00;13;58;05
But, you know, tune into this idea of like a digital artifact and, and kind of step over the almost illusion or into the social reality of wanting to own it. And I did. Yeah. And so I forget what that question is.
00;13;58;05 - 00;14;12;18
Chris
But you're doing great. We're talking about the Hapsburg here. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we're we're we're just getting ready to to roll our way all the way back to Jacob Pflueger. And, the words of Charles that.
00;14;12;21 - 00;14;14;21
Aaron
Let's go, let's go. Chris.
00;14;14;24 - 00;14;28;15
Pri
Yeah. Welcome to this is, actually, it's a great time to do an introduction. So welcome to Net Society. It's me, Chris Aaron. Typically Derek, but he is not here today. So in his absence we have the wonderful artist 113.
00;14;28;17 - 00;14;29;02
Aaron
The one and.
00;14;29;02 - 00;14;50;17
Pri
Only the one and only. And you know, prolific particularly known for math castles but obviously a whole body of work. And you know, obviously you guys know at this point we're on episode 21. We're exploring the world of digital art, crypto, AI, tech and more, bringing you deep insights, fresh perspectives, and hitting on some themes explored in DAOs, the timeline and beyond.
00;14;50;17 - 00;15;03;28
Pri
So thank you guys for coming. Just as a heads up, these opinions and thoughts are not of our employer and just our own thoughts. So yeah, let's kick it off. Back to the Habsburgs. Serb, where do we want to go.
00;15;04;04 - 00;15;19;20
Chris
Before I hop down? My my wife is like, oh, so yeah, good luck with 311 who you got on the show there? And so I prefer maybe if 113 actually laughs as Nick Hexum of 311, originator of the Omaha story.
00;15;19;22 - 00;15;26;18
Pri
Well, I think 311 I think of this is millennial me is the the band that song. Amber. Yeah.
00;15;26;21 - 00;15;27;27
Chris
Yeah, that's what.
00;15;27;27 - 00;15;29;10
Aaron
We're talking about here.
00;15;29;13 - 00;15;30;17
Pri
Oh, okay. All right.
00;15;30;18 - 00;15;35;18
Aaron
So the late 90s, power. What? Not power. Right. What kind of, like punk.
00;15;35;18 - 00;15;41;17
Chris
Edge of rap rock? I mean, they called it the Omaha style.
00;15;41;19 - 00;15;42;23
Pri
So really, I don't know that.
00;15;42;27 - 00;16;10;09
Chris
Yeah, they're from Omaha. I'm from Nebraska. No, that's part of the appeal of them. Brian Brinkman, I believe, is a big 311 fan. He's a Nebraska guy for you. I'm going to I'm going to tell you how old I am. I saw 311 for five bucks and all ages show I was either 16 or 17. And so this is before they became the 311 of Amber and whatever, like chilled out reggae.
00;16;10;09 - 00;16;23;03
Chris
Ask Mega-hits before Nick Hexum could afford to buy a, a Florida key where he lived for a little bit. But, you know, our guess 311 that was all about this. What was it like living in the Florida Keys?
00;16;23;08 - 00;16;33;11
Nick I actually could, I know more about some of these things than you than you'd think, but, no. No comment. Do you like our privacy?
00;16;33;13 - 00;16;39;14
Pri
I'm in Florida now, and honestly, Florida is so underrated. You guys, Florida is awesome. We should all move here.
00;16;39;21 - 00;16;44;29
Chris
I feel like Florida is properly rated. You got two much northeast on this call.
00;16;45;01 - 00;16;50;02
Aaron
I agree it's it's a lovely place, but, I'm happy where I am.
00;16;50;04 - 00;16;53;23
Chris
But but we're happy for you. You do, you do Florida.
00;16;53;29 - 00;16;59;28
Pri
All right. Cool. Well, moving on past Florida. All right. What are we. What don't we. So. Yeah. Where are we going? Here.
00;17;00;06 - 00;17;23;27
Chris
Yeah. Let me take a stab here. So 113. I feel like you and I like philosophically, you're kind of in the same head space, but, like, coming from it maybe in a completely different levels where what am I like, cranks about the NFT space? And this whole crypto culture thing is, there is so many things that we just don't call what they are.
00;17;23;29 - 00;17;59;11
Chris
And a lot of these NFT drops are simply product that masquerade as art. You know, me being a collector or me being and flamingo dao me just being a product person, you know, who like that's my orientation and worldview. I want to know what I'm buying. I and if someone is trying to sell me product, but dressing it up like art and like ascribing all this stuff on top of it, that sure, like you can get away calling this set of machine generated, you know, a thousand images, blah blah, blah, blah blah art.
00;17;59;14 - 00;18;26;21
Chris
But like its product to me, right? It's more like this is a collectible with the story around it. And sure, it has all these properties to it, right? But let's all be real. Like there's a whole glut of this coming. The same people who brought me this, you know, have already delivered like 40,000 of these things and like a regular cadence in the past, and they'll continue to do so as long as people buy this shit.
00;18;26;23 - 00;18;57;25
Chris
And so, like I, I approach this world partially with like, an ax to grind in which I want us to normalize this shit. I want us to turn a lot of this stuff into everyday entertainment, into media, into, you know, like this experiential thing, and stop trying to dress it up as something in which it isn't. Part of that is if we can do that, if we can be real about the shit that that's being produced and what it is and what function it serves, right?
00;18;57;25 - 00;19;26;29
Chris
Like then we can actually create air space for like capital art, right? Like we'll know it when we see it because it differs from the stuff. That's the every day. But right now we're in this place where, you know, if you want to sell work, if you want to like release and you want to have like the collector community, buy into this like everyone goes on this shared laugh about it being important, it having meaning, it being profound.
00;19;26;29 - 00;19;56;20
Chris
And it's like, man, I don't know. It's a bunch of pretty pictures generated by code or by a machine in which, you know, we as a social layer interact over, but like, they're decorative objects. And it just, it creates this reality distortion field where, you know, we're too nice were to, like, willing to play along and just go for the ride and that like hallucination that, that, like, shared, you know, I don't know, like, mind fuck.
00;19;56;26 - 00;20;09;24
Chris
Right. Just clutters up everyone's attention and kind of crowds out the ability for us to actually know art when we see it or like, embrace it. You gotta have thoughts around this.
00;20;09;26 - 00;20;11;11
Oh, me definitely. No.
00;20;11;14 - 00;20;15;22
Chris
No I didn't data. So you guys doing a stadium tour of the summer, playing all the old hits?
00;20;15;24 - 00;20;23;16
That's that's my goal actually. I, you know, I think I'm gonna ask you dungeon crawler, for, whatever. Yeah. I want to go on a stadium tour. Genuinely.
00;20;23;18 - 00;20;36;07
Pri
It's like the context reality is kind of what you're suggesting, though, right, Chris? It's like the loss of context. I mean, this is kind of where the conversation or around, like we were having earlier together as a group on like LARPing and all that, it's like.
00;20;36;13 - 00;20;54;02
Aaron
Yeah, I think in part like the NFT community is trying to Larp a bit like it's it's fine art when it's not right. I think I heard you say that in part, Chris. I mean, it can be, but it's not necessarily that, nor is it limited to that. And I think that that's what creates that cognitive dissonance that you you may be noting there.
00;20;54;02 - 00;20;56;00
Aaron
Chris, maybe I mean, you.
00;20;56;03 - 00;21;18;02
Chris
Know, that's it. You know, like if we pretend things are art that are actually product, you know, a that means people who are actually wanting to create art perhaps have to conform to what is selling and what the accepted notions are, but also, you know, it creates an illusion where people think they're getting art and then they're not actually hungry for actual art.
00;21;18;05 - 00;21;20;15
Chris
You know, we're we're all on, like, Soylent.
00;21;20;17 - 00;21;49;05
Well, you can make, you know, like the whole, like the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent. Like the social reality that people build around what you're calling product can say can stay self incentivized to make a kind of local. I always call it this kind of local max Reddit Funko Pop culture. Right? Because if you want, you can make a little biodome where the stuff that is maybe more like product than art gets, you know, an enduring social reality.
00;21;49;05 - 00;22;10;19
I've been thinking a lot about, okay, so I use this phrase social reality. You know, on Ethereum to do the computation, you pay money. So there's like, money is gath. It actually like give the life to the computation. And I think the same is true for these social realities. Right. Except in the case you're talking about, it's like amateurism and Stockholm syndrome fuzed together where the financial like.
00;22;10;19 - 00;22;30;26
And there's these other good side effects of this too, right. Because there are there are people who are artists and there are people who have like creative practices. And also life is long somebody who might be doing slop right now, you know, ten years from now, they could be radically reorienting the world through some discovery in their practice because they were funded by maybe a culture that was confusing art for product.
00;22;30;26 - 00;22;50;12
Right. So there's all kinds of interesting side effects of this. And but it can be very frustrating. Also, when you're a person like me who looks at this and and sees it differently, maybe I could try and stage out some my mental model and you tell me how you relate to this. But, you know, I think basically there's I think there's effectively like no expertise right now period.
00;22;50;14 - 00;23;19;24
And so and what I mean by this is let's bifurcate into two categories. Actually there's trad. So this is like big institutional city, big museum, big auction big gallery. Right. Big academia big school. Right. And these, these institutions, by virtue of their structure, they in my by my opinion, by my by my sensibilities, and I've had this sense of being a kid in the 90s, you know, it's it's it's obvious to me intuitively in the 90s, why would you even own a television?
00;23;20;01 - 00;23;35;25
Right? Like if you're streaming videos off IRC at the end of the 90s, you know, watching movies before they're in theaters, when you're reading websites and you implicitly know, like, whatever the New York Times meant is different now, but the world around you doesn't know that you're the Silicon Valley capitalist. Always quote the Gibson, the future is here.
00;23;35;25 - 00;24;00;18
It's just not evenly distributed. And only recently did I come to understand it. The end of the 90s, the future was already here. In my thinking, but it wasn't evenly distributed into the world. And I kind of like, had this deference to the world's back that I'm like, I guess I guess the adults must be right, I guess, like, people are going to keep going to the movie theater and are going to continue to treat a newspaper with the same kind of a story, all, you know, and I just didn't I wasn't saying this explicitly, but I understood it intuitively.
00;24;00;20 - 00;24;20;27
And now I'm off the deep end because I I've watched this happen so many times, and I'm telling you, like the brand names that people use around here to try to legitimate their collecting. Like the big, big museum. But, you know, these are poker signals more than anything. And they're, they're they're a big art institution. Is is being MSNBC ified finally.
00;24;20;29 - 00;24;38;14
Right. Art is so slow, it hasn't even gotten completely hollowed out. I mean, it has obviously been are saying earlier, you know, it's clear to the to net artists, you know, and it's clear to post-internet artists the internet is the art city. It's not New York. It's not, you know, Basel, whatever. It's not Miami, it's it's the internet.
00;24;38;17 - 00;24;56;19
But the the world kind of wouldn't fess up. And then eventually the kind of train wreck all happens at once like it's happened in these, you know, don't, don't go work at a record label in like, you know, 2005 or something or 2000, right. Like, would you rather go do the website for a record label, or would you rather found Spotify?
00;24;56;21 - 00;25;17;26
Right. Like, would you rather, you know, you would go build Napster, right. You know, or or start the I sound company, right? Things the world is being like dramatically the capacity for the world to dramatically be restructured by computing and the internet is, like, still going to keep escalating. Like that's not, oh, computing happened. Now we're dealing with it.
00;25;17;26 - 00;25;36;08
No, it's like ramping up. Right. And we haven't even really gotten to biology robotics like Astro. You know, I keep telling everybody like a week ago, you know, in the past, DARPA put out a call for something like a 500 meter Astro by a lot Astro biological machine. So that's the present. That's what artists could be doing. Right?
00;25;36;15 - 00;25;57;20
So what I'm saying is the structures of these institutions, they are not designed to think of them like machines or systems. Right. So like programs. And they, they are they're supposed to be golden. And largely they are, but not as it relates to surfing the condition of computing and the internet dissolving society. They cannot self reconstruct their machines made of big steel beams.
00;25;57;20 - 00;26;13;29
They're not made of like nanobot particles. They can't rebuild themselves fast. And then there's this like, kind of FOMO from them where they're trying and, but is they're hiring always perfect. So you know, are they designed like a coffee mug? I'm gonna hold, you know, I've got a glass of coffee in my hand. I could bang it on the table.
00;26;13;29 - 00;26;36;17
I can drop it. It's not spilling. Somebody designed it so it could accomplish these tasks. Those systems and machines, they're not designed to serve for this condition. They don't have that agility. They have other goals. So maybe they're not the ultimate golden stewards of computing and art as a representational frontier. And maybe their relationship to it doesn't match the feeling of prestige that their brand name used to mean.
00;26;36;24 - 00;26;53;02
And so, you know, other people don't notice that. So now. So that's one that's threat. Now let's look at just crypto actually think it was bifurcate into like or you know gate kept open possibility aka the internet. But now the internet has money like like much more even than it did before. It has money even as a material.
00;26;53;04 - 00;27;09;28
It has networks that are made of, you know, the internet that has internets of value expressed as computer programs. So doesn't that sound like the kind of thing art history could actually be made of? And so then inside of that, though, what you have now, how do I explain this? Oh my gosh. So what you have though is like an amateurism.
00;27;10;00 - 00;27;32;09
You know, you have. So I have to take a little bit of a twisted tour, which is when I, when I had my dog sent to the hurricane, the NFTs were finally happening. I had a 180 on some of my ten year long opinions. You know, in 2020, I'm like, oh wow, OpenSea is still running like that thing from two years ago that had like weird, like bad Hearthstone knockoffs and like, it's it's a bad Pokémon clone.
00;27;32;09 - 00;27;48;10
No one could play, but it's called Ether Pokemon or something, right? I'm like, oh, that still exists. That's about to be infrastructure. Like, if anything ever really happens here, you know? And you know what I start trying to do? I start trying to like, tap on the shoulder of my art and culture friends like, hey, pay attention like something, which is one of my roles.
00;27;48;10 - 00;28;00;16
I'm always doing this, you know, and I and I basically see the future. I understand this about myself. It sounds arrogant to say that, sorry, I have a pretty good track record. So I'm tapping on my friends and they even know. But I can't make them care. I can show the horse the water. They're not even going to walk there.
00;28;00;16 - 00;28;16;15
They're not going to drink. And so, you know, then what happens is I've put on this cartoon set of numbers by accident as an art to trade cryptopunks and when I find myself in is immersed in a group of people who understand it like, and I don't have to convince them to Satoshi quote. If you don't get it, I don't have time to convince you.
00;28;16;15 - 00;28;32;03
More or less. Right. Same situation. And so now I'm in crypto, you know. But the people I'm around, they're good people. They're my friends. We all love cryptopunks. We actually want them. We're also traders. We're trading, we're flipping. We have money when we buying art blocks. Okay. There's, Ringer's comes out, archetypes come out. Those look kind of cool.
00;28;32;03 - 00;28;42;25
I kind of want one. I'm going to buy eight of them, and I'm going to sell five of them. And I'm still have three of my archetypes because I wanted them. I thought they looked good, thought they were better than basically, you know, neck and neck with ringers. Some of the best stuff on the platform at the time.
00;28;43;02 - 00;29;00;06
And, and I understood this. And, you know, my friends are like, they don't get it. But inside of crypto you don't you don't have an expert. You have this kind of place, you have these placeholders of futurity or like living in a simulation of art collecting, you have people who do understand and can take the risks into taking crypto seriously or understand it.
00;29;00;06 - 00;29;23;11
You know enough to trade, right? But then they don't have the history and background with art, so that's very bad. But it's also very good. Why is it bad? Well, I said a tweet once like sterile shell traders being dumped into a strip mall painting gallery having religious experiences. Right. Like or, you know, hits your first joint, eat a half eaten Wendy's cheeseburger and thinks it's the best of, you know, horizon of culinary possibility imaginable.
00;29;23;11 - 00;29;41;13
Like, well, it may be, you know, in your lived experience. It's very funny to me because crypto has this slightly kind of skew toward like almost right, but it's like it loves participation trophies, it loves a participation trophy simulation of art culture. It loves it's like lived experience testimony as a kind of defense about what art is actually important or whatever.
00;29;41;13 - 00;29;44;29
Right. And, it's this kind of funny thing to me. Very true.
00;29;45;02 - 00;29;46;03
Aaron
Very true. Yeah.
00;29;46;05 - 00;30;03;29
I mean, yeah, that's art. Is it? Art is, kind of culture war in the sense like it is the it is postmodern language game, in fact, war all the way down because it's just what's good or bad, you know. So we used to have authorities in trad again in my two, in my, in my two prong model here in trad, you could defer to authority.
00;30;03;29 - 00;30;25;07
You could defer to a centralized brand name that had this incredible reputation built over, you know, 100 years, sometimes more than that. And now but those institutions, as usual with institutions, aren't really living up to their full like what their maybe they never were. Maybe it was always a separate guise. But I don't know. I kind of think that, you know, I'm maybe I'm stupid, but I want to believe in things like MoMA.
00;30;25;07 - 00;30;43;13
I want to believe in the idea of a museum, and I want to believe in them with like, you know, the goal that they're golden stewards of these representational frontiers, like doing something for society and and so now in crypto, it's, gate capped. So you don't need to go through the bureaucracy machinery of like what's legible to these trad and trad isn't keeping up.
00;30;43;13 - 00;30;59;02
So that's good. So now and you know, I'm it sounds like I'm being really critical of the crypto people in another way. It's utopian again, because it's open. Their imaginations are open. They don't know better so they don't know better. So if you come up with something real like indifferent, you know, as long as it can be legible somehow, then you can.
00;30;59;03 - 00;31;16;02
I keep saying it's like trying to Trojan horse real art into a culture that is like bordering on contempt for it. And so it's this really open possibility. But there's no experts here either. And like, the artists are still kind of scared, shivering or something like, I'm sorry, I'm here to tell you, I'm the expert is their art critics.
00;31;16;03 - 00;31;33;11
It's it's it's got to be me. It's not the trad is going to be. It's a big hunkering clockwork. It can't serve. It's got a different role. The crypto people. You can easily fail the marshmallow test. It's so easy to just. And you're incentivized to to be short to mid-term and to live in the simulation of being an art collector and all this kind of stuff.
00;31;33;11 - 00;31;48;15
But I'm telling you, you know, the crypto people, it's like, oh, they just care about money. No, they hate money. I like money much more than them because it's like that. I mean, but this the Xerox Parc says it. Go watch Allen case talk at Y Combinator. How to invent the future. It's $1 trillion industry that Xerox Parc kicks off.
00;31;48;15 - 00;32;11;27
I also think Xerox Parc is much closer to something like a capital R Renaissance artist. So if crypto, this, gate cap thing that anybody can now enter ever, you know, it's the local culture here isn't going to have the expertise. It's going to have its own local culture. It's even going to defer to trad. And it's going to be like, let's let's kick our stuff up to Lasema, let's kick our stuff out to the brand names that we know are a poker signal, so we can make our stuff worth a bunch of money.
00;32;12;00 - 00;32;35;04
It's like, you got it. You're putting the cart before the horse. If you like money, do real art, do a capital R renaissance, have the have the will to an assessment criteria of like a capital n capital e new excellence. What would it look like to boot load like the you know you think the bar is Impressionism. The bar is is your ex park kind of distilling the personal computer from the.
00;32;35;06 - 00;32;52;09
It didn't totally invent the term, but it really distills this image of a personal computer. That's the bar. The bar is not. I'm the 30th user of a GitHub repo that somebody put on the internet. Two years ago, and then I minted it three years later, and the people I'm selling it to just want to trade in placeholders of futurity because they feel dislocated.
00;32;52;09 - 00;33;13;13
They're afraid of AI. They want to feel like I must be the future unbuilt. I'm buying some very, you know, I have a share in some participation trophy idea of the future, but like, of course they don't have the capacity to access and even the top money guys, why should they? They're too busy making money to know. Like they didn't just spend 15 years, 25 years, 30 years thinking about this and have the expertise.
00;33;13;13 - 00;33;37;23
So then there's just it's a it's a chaos of facts with expertise. And somehow either some the internet has to either eventually self-assemble, decentralized some machinery that can really assess excellence and not just like, oh, it's some credentialed PhD person who has a Twitter account. Like, actually, what would an internet era machinery in the sense of a weird decentralized thing that arrives at the destination of like being able to assess new excellence?
00;33;37;23 - 00;33;57;01
It's what I and I just spend a lot of time thinking about. Or you just need individuals who have a will. You need, like warlords, people who just show up in this on GitHub. The desert of a hurricane is made of money, stupidity and ugliness and figure out how to, like, decisively strike art history into it. Almost, you know, against the will of the shorter term thinking.
00;33;57;01 - 00;34;01;02
And but it's just open to do that if you're a person who has it. And that's how I think of it.
00;34;01;02 - 00;34;17;15
Aaron
I love that framing. How do you think we do make Ethereum more like like 000 dark 113? Like what? What's missing kind of there is just kind of recognizing that it is a bigger palette that people can paint from, or recognizing art.
00;34;17;15 - 00;34;35;18
Pri
Or real movement, like making the art in this space a real movement. Like, does it have to be coordinators or just people pushing? Because I feel like the initial NFT, you know, digital art cycle, in a way, you could argue that it was a movement, like the number of digital art collectors from then pre this whole thing to post is like, there's millions now.
00;34;35;18 - 00;34;52;05
Pri
There were probably a couple thousand before that were like in the gallery circuit buying hard drives. And so you know, I think to some extent the movement has already started. But how do you actually like make it clear that it is because most people think the movement is like dead or it's in a little or no one cares anymore.
00;34;52;05 - 00;35;00;29
Pri
Like I feel like there's also some questions around that plus plus Ethereum. And if you if you think about it, you know, the Ethereum story is getting the same kind of knock as well. In a way.
00;35;01;01 - 00;35;15;19
Yeah I have a different a different well, I agree with you actually I think crypto art, which usually means tokenized. I think it's eventually going to mean more than that. But I'm self incentivized. So you know, another another increasingly known fact about me is you know, oh who's this. Who's this guy who talks like this? Is he so arrogant?
00;35;15;19 - 00;35;33;27
Who does he think he is? He made this thing called Terraform in 2021. And there's all these people who came before him. He should show some more respect. As if I don't. By the way, if you can't hear the respect I've paid to the people who have built the culture. But yeah, I'm a crypto artist from 11 years ago, so, you know, I, I was making crypto art in 2014 and there's I'm not OG because there's no culture.
00;35;33;27 - 00;35;52;01
People really to be OG amongst at this time. And there's a number of people also from this, you know, I could think of like I like to show, I would say, you know, random darknet shopper in 20 under 2014 is like one of my all time favorite pieces of crypto art. I think it like runs circles as an artwork around, like that's majority of like the kind of Grail canon or whatever.
00;35;52;01 - 00;36;20;18
And and even then it's kind of like it's also like almost you call it like it's a, it's a definitely above average. It's a, it's a pretty good new media piece, right. As in like just go scroll the infinite, you know, with art blocks, people were going like full on zombie formalism. Know it's just like okay, but search plot or Twitter or search like Glsl, you know, Code Golf, Twitter or go to artstation and look at what people have been doing in substance, designer and substance, but substance designer, really, you know, I mean, just like there's an infinite scroll of this kind of stuff.
00;36;20;18 - 00;36;36;25
So what is it about this that makes it like, you know, as world historic as you're saying or whatever, right? So anyway, why am I saying this? Because anyway, there's just a canon of stuff that hasn't been brought back in, but it will I won't said, you know, if I get in any crypto art piece, it would be like Brad Trammell's vacuum forms as like Doctor Bonner.
00;36;36;25 - 00;36;56;12
So, and hopefully foods, you know, whatever from again like 2015 or whatever. And so but why am I saying all this? Because digital art. Well, yeah, I mean that's obviously going to happen. Like but I kind of think I'm talking about something different. Right. And also crypto art 2017 hashing images, trading hashes of images. Right. Like the canon of people like copy.
00;36;56;12 - 00;37;03;29
You know, I really always think John Ryan Young is so deeply left out of this conversation. And you know, another. And I'll just go here. I've been doing it more lately.
00;37;03;29 - 00;37;04;14
Aaron
He's great.
00;37;04;20 - 00;37;24;28
He's so great. And he, you know, he says no to super rare. You know, when Super Rare is launching, there's people on earth like me who are like, oh, but that idea is like, why would you do that? Why do you why would you just do hashes of off chain files? And actually, why would you make a third party intermediary to do hashes of, you know, does this have anything to do with the spirit of what, like Bitcoin, crypto networks.
00;37;24;28 - 00;37;40;26
Like you know what this can express. And I'm wrong. I'm stupid. You know, it's much smarter for many reasons to do super rare as a business, but actually as a culture super rare kind of help. It's like a little spark that eventually sets off a kind of fire that's like CBGB's or something. It's like a scene, right? So crypto art is a kind of scene.
00;37;41;01 - 00;37;57;06
It's a social reality in a scene. And then and then those people kind of, you know, while I had mine, I superiority of like, yeah, but why just do hashes in those images. The people who had an enthusiasm for this or weren't like pushing themselves like maybe beyond the horizon so that compositionally, in terms of thinking about what the materials could do, they built a social reality.
00;37;57;06 - 00;38;11;22
They built an art culture, they built a market. And that's real. That's very interesting. So you're going to keep having that. I think you're going to have things that are accessible to white audiences, like pictures, like things that look like art, like things that fit in that tradition. But change at 5% in the virtual adolescence. Yeah, you're going to keep seeing that, right?
00;38;11;22 - 00;38;36;20
Like, but at the same time, you know, and that's good. That's really good actually. That's tremendous. But but what where I go like, you know, internet induced autism, like off the off the deep end is, when people are kind of mixing up some of that for like a Renaissance because the Renaissance involves like, like the invention slash discovery of perspective projecting and then, humanism in tandem with that and then like the things that art does in tandem with that.
00;38;36;23 - 00;38;53;19
And you don't have artists here who are widely really doing that. You have people who think they're going to get royalties forever. They can't think thoughts in the material. Right? They're not they're not thinking about what the material. They're they're just using it as a commerce distribution site or doing these almost little tech demos, these things that they think like can competitively differentiate them.
00;38;53;19 - 00;39;09;05
You know, it's I been talking lately about this word dignity because this person, Ian Bogost has a great talk called fun where he's talking about like treating medium with dignity and exploring the unique opportunities of it, you know, and and I think that's like an artist's duty. So anyway, I just I you're definitely going to have digital art.
00;39;09;05 - 00;39;30;19
You're definitely going to continue to have a digital art market. You can definitely put screens in homes and do digital art. You can definitely make interactive things. There's definitely apps, all this kind of, you know, apps, interactive dynamic apps, this thing. And then you get to installations. You get a big bigness and spectacle. Then with robotics, you'll get to, oh, print it big, you know, make it a make it big, you know, do the arbitrage of a thing that used to be expensive, like making something big.
00;39;30;24 - 00;39;44;04
And now you can do it robotically. Take it, take your image, put it on a textile, make the textile big. Make the textile big in North Carolina, make the you know, you've print on a big giant piece of metal, then hit it with varnish. Take a digital photo, but use the kind of varnish these on an oil painting.
00;39;44;04 - 00;39;58;15
Put it big, put it in a gallery. It's like, okay, I like all this stuff. I like all these strokes. I'll do every one of these strokes. Actually. I'll buy these strokes. There's some digital varnish movie paintings I love to actually live with in my home. At the same time, I think there are other horizons to computing as a medium.
00;39;58;15 - 00;40;16;19
What it actually is unique, like what's unique about computer. And it's the most important medium right now. And it's until it escalates by intersecting more with biology and all this. And artists need to do that. And there's money here. There's how do you do Xerox Parc? I don't know, because it's if the question is how do you get coordination gadget gadgetry to assemble to get people to coordinate.
00;40;16;19 - 00;40;38;28
So Xerox Parc is a it's a company is a coordination gadget makes a bunch of copy your money. There's all this kind of RPA research. There's all the research, you know like Ivan Sutherland. There's what Doug Engelbart's doing. And then one little company gets this person who has the inside to say, oh, yeah, what if I just gave these, like, you know, this, this small double digit number of, like, scientists, artists like their engineers, their math science engineers.
00;40;38;28 - 00;40;47;20
They probably did acid. Let's get them ten years of runway to work on the most important projects they say that they think are, you know, go watch our case talks. I shouldn't be doing this, but.
00;40;47;22 - 00;41;03;21
Aaron
Yeah, but don't you think that was part of it? It was like the space and also the framing. It was kind of like they were given the freedom and permission and the dignity to create. Right? Sure. They were given enough capital to support themselves, but they were doing it almost from like a place of curiosity and almost joy.
00;41;03;21 - 00;41;24;08
Aaron
Right? They absolutely. Yeah. Thinking, thinking about the commercialization and parts of it, they were definitely. Yes. Thinking about, hey, this is a new medium, right? A computer like they've crossed the Rubicon and have become more powerful, like what? What can we do to make them better? Right? Like, what can we do to make them interesting? And, you know, it wasn't just zero Xerox Park.
00;41;24;08 - 00;41;42;05
Aaron
It was also parts of Bell Labs, right? Where you so articulate information theory. And I think that's where we actually saw the first, you know, like audio visual arts, like video art and other things coming out of that. I don't think they were looking at that with like an eye towards modernization, even though all that stuff has become monetized over time.
00;41;42;10 - 00;42;01;22
Chris
Yeah. It's not surprising that Holiness Aaron, right, is a Bell Labs alum, right? Like, you see those two things, you're like, oh yeah, duh. Hey, let's try to tie some of this back to that neoliberal. This Habsburg thing that's looming in the background. And we at some point, I can't remember the name of the podcast, so you don't have to do it.
00;42;01;22 - 00;42;30;04
Chris
Aaron. We should mention that. But yeah, within it there's this concept of, the Imperium and the Dominion. Right. And the Imperium is, I believe in the example they give to introduce this. Right. Rome is the Imperium, and there are things that belong to Rome, and they're things that Rome dictates, rules, governs, and the time span of the Imperium stretches out in decades and centuries.
00;42;30;04 - 00;42;54;13
Chris
Right. Like the Imperium often has a very, very long view of things. And then there's the Dominion. And the venom is your private life. It's the life of the home, but it's also the life of, like, commerce. It's the life of contracts, of markets, of like how goods flow through the world. And these two things. Right. Like Dominion lives in the day to day Dominion, you know, has different high time horizons.
00;42;54;13 - 00;43;18;16
Chris
It has different goals. But like it ultimately more often than not, right. The Imperium governs over the Dominion. And so before I like, lose my train of thought here. Right. Like I do want to introduce the idea that, like, we don't have an Imperium within crypto and we're very, very against it. But at the same time, we have this desperate need for father figures and invalidation.
00;43;18;16 - 00;43;40;23
Chris
And so it's like this thing where like, crypto wants its cake and to eat it too, and is willing to make these sort of hard decisions, or is like unwilling to have a relationship with time that concepts like the Imperium have. And so to tie this over to like some things I'm 113 was saying about like the NBCsn ification of these institutions.
00;43;40;26 - 00;44;02;16
Chris
Maybe these institutions have their own set of issues, their own bags, their own objectives in the world. But then, like we look to them almost a function like an Imperium, simply for the sake of like validating our bags in the Dominion without giving them any responsibilities or any authority either. Right. It's like this. We want it. We want big Sothebys sales.
00;44;02;16 - 00;44;22;13
Chris
We want squiggles in MoMA, you know, or whatever. Like the meme is a week is right, but then you don't want to actually listen to the Imperium, or you don't want to have an interior. That actually capable of, like, guiding and governing your scene, you know, in terms of like, hey, this is an important thing for us, right?
00;44;22;13 - 00;44;42;29
Chris
Like, it might not be now and you might not be able to easily consume it as a piece of like, poster sized digital art that's tradable, but like at some point in time. Right. Like this new thing is going to matter, and therefore I'm investing in it and I don't give a shit what you have to say, because I'm the interior and I work in different timescales.
00;44;43;01 - 00;44;46;12
Chris
I just get paused there because I don't know if anyone's following me.
00;44;46;15 - 00;45;08;08
Pri
Yeah, I think I do, but I think the one thing I want to understand is like, you know, again, the network is permissionless, as you often remind us, how do you get people to care about that? Like the just even kind of the distinction of that caring about the like Sotheby's or the Imperium, I guess as a as it is and wanting to be validated.
00;45;08;09 - 00;45;10;13
Pri
Like, I don't even know how you shift that mindset.
00;45;10;17 - 00;45;44;27
Aaron
I think it's it's the net new, right? Like, why did people care about the early things that were coming out of Bell Labs and Xerox Parc? They were interesting. They were novel. Right? And then they became useful over time. And I think it's it's the same thing that needs to happen here. My critique of just the past 18 months of NFTs is that there there's there's more of a desire for affirmation from legacy institutions than there is to kind of explore this design and technical space that's still largely unexplored.
00;45;44;29 - 00;46;11;02
Aaron
And, and I think the moment that creators in this space really lean in to this new canvas and how to use it in a new and novel and interesting way, that's when stuff comes back. And I don't think that just endemic to NFTs, I think it's also endemic to some of the financial primitives people are making. They're just recycling the same stuff, making it maybe faster, making it maybe create like more dopamine hits.
00;46;11;02 - 00;46;26;04
Aaron
But there's nothing super new that's getting people excited. And I think that that's why there's this, like malaise across a lot of crypto, especially for a lot of the early folks, because they want to see stuff new. They're like hungering and clamoring for it. It just hasn't been provided.
00;46;26;11 - 00;46;55;29
Chris
Right. We keep referencing Bell Labs, Xerox Parc. They are like downstream of of an Imperium, right? Like they're the interior. I'm saying, hey, we need some real creative, forward looking thinkers messing around with shit because, look, marble, that's where Bell Labs comes from. It comes from, like, Atlantic Telephone and Telegraph Company, AT&T, the Death Star, right? Oh, Parc comes from Xerox.
00;46;56;01 - 00;47;19;05
Chris
Like the copy maker company. Right. Like they're not doing it because they want to, like, create local culture art scenes, right? They're doing it because they need to move packet of over communication networks faster than copper wires can do it. They're doing it because they're worried that copy or sales are not going to carry their earnings one day.
00;47;19;07 - 00;47;35;23
Chris
Right. And so like the function of the Imperium is not to show one, one three like the potentiality for like a new reticence of networked world computing. It's to sell sell something other than copiers. One day we just happen to get this other benefit.
00;47;36;00 - 00;47;51;13
There is a funny irony across the couple. I think it's an irony across a couple of the things people were mentioning, I forget. And at some point you something about like, well, how do we get a Xerox Parc? And, you know, it's funny, I wanted to call something at one point, Art Park was a park, and I was like, can you do that is too much.
00;47;51;13 - 00;48;14;18
And anyway, there's these people who called themselves Park Park, and they've had a Theorem Foundation funding is my understanding and all this and, you know, do I think they are literally at the level of Xerox Parc? I'm not sure, but they're really substantial and and good. And the things that have come out of them, you know, and artists here have paid like so little attention.
00;48;14;20 - 00;48;37;20
And the iron, you know, the crazy part is, you know, I like to put it in terms of things like autographs, right? Because, you know, autographs is one of these. It's not an incredibly, anyway, autographs is I think I think this is real. I think autographs is worth like, it's it's art history grade. My opinion. The ricochet of the implementation of a cryptopunks marketplace, the social reality that grew around that project and all the glyphs together, I think are effectively art history.
00;48;37;20 - 00;48;54;24
Great. I also consider myself in this canon, but I'll leave my with my self out for a second. But what did auto glyphs do? Well, it looked at the material. You could call it a world computer. You could call it a crypto network, you know. But it's Ethereum is computer. And it's thought, well, what are new things I can uniquely do with this?
00;48;55;00 - 00;49;13;01
And then it did a very small gesture. Right. And there's been not a ton of that. Unbelievably, relative to the amount of money, attention and mania. Right. Like it became obvious to me that like, a couple things became obvious to me. It's like in 2021, I'm like, trading and all this, this is the best video game I've ever played in my life, and a lot more people are going to want to come do this.
00;49;13;01 - 00;49;29;13
So there's going to be infinite competition. And I'm like, well, I better kind of like lay down a fortress, you know, so that like when, when this is a thousand x, the amount of tension I will how will I differentiate myself and how will I have a brand name that jurors and all this kind of stuff. And that's what Math Castles was kind of built to do in many levels.
00;49;29;13 - 00;49;52;15
And, and I also then thought, well, what do I actually have to do to be sort of recognized by the cultural, the culture's capacity to see? And I'm like, well, first of all, it's almost table stakes duty to do the kind of Larva Labs gestures of these, study the unique things that the material does or like, you know, inventor discover in the context of the unique affordances of the material, you know, by which I mean from a set of constraints.
00;49;52;15 - 00;50;14;28
I mean, this is the lesson from generative art. It's a lesson to go if somebody is listening to this and you haven't seen Conway's Game of Life, stop listening right now. Pause the podcast. Go do the Conway's Game of Life and think about it. It's like a holy object. It's much more important than anything that's happened in crypto or as a distillation of a set of premises, and it's related to this generative art insight of like interesting emergent phenomena.
00;50;14;28 - 00;50;33;13
So very simple sets of rules, complex emergent phenomena. And so, you know, and and think about culture, then think about Petri Petri dishes and like bacteria growing on a petri dish or, you know, so it's like, well, what's the culture? What are the next what are the up and coming materials, you know, where are there just auto glyphs sitting there like it's so easy.
00;50;33;13 - 00;50;52;10
This culture like fails the marshmallow test, right. It won't it won't even do an answer where you're all the stuff you're talking about. So same question. It's like, well, we can't really rely on trad. Trad can maybe be this like lagging signal to like to me, getting MoMA is kind of like trying to get Goldman Sachs to have an A theorem trading desk.
00;50;52;10 - 00;50;53;13
Right? It's like.
00;50;53;15 - 00;51;12;08
Aaron
Exactly. It's like this. And this is like the whole conversation even around the government buying digital assets like that's, you know, it's it's kind of like not the point. And it feels and I think people have rightly criticized folks are being excited about it because it just feels like a little thirsty. Yeah. In 2008 and or 2009, right.
00;51;12;14 - 00;51;19;06
Aaron
When people were thinking about Bitcoin, I don't think they were thinking about, oh, I can't wait till the government owns this bananas.
00;51;19;11 - 00;51;38;03
I'm in some seemingly kind of a seem like I'm all over the place, but I, I know where I'm trying to get to. Which is oh, look at the research from Zero Spark. If you haven't studied Programable cryptography, you let me do you a favor, okay? Oh, gosh. This person, he's talking, he's been here since 2013. So, like, you know, I've been here since 2013.
00;51;38;03 - 00;51;54;13
I listen to podcasts. Let's talk Bitcoin, right? Maybe right now the podcast you're listening to might be sort of like what that podcast was that. And at that time they were exposing my mind to all sorts of things, like the idea of NFT is is right there in that podcast before the quote unquote implementation of the first NFT.
00;51;54;20 - 00;52;19;29
Right. All these things go study Programable cryptography, go study ZK proofs or zero knowledge computation, go talk to GPT, go talk to grok about, you know, hi, I'm five years old. Please help me learn what is a ZK proof and why does it matter to my life? There's like a kind of suite of these things like proofs, fully homomorphic encryption, multi-party computation.
00;52;20;02 - 00;52;44;16
They put the zero expert people have brand branded this programable cryptography. And so almost like a photocopier computer company in a way like the need to scale crypto and the kind of research community around Ethereum put all this money that like turbocharged research around with their charming programable cryptography programable cryptography is decoupled as and you can just you can you can use it.
00;52;44;19 - 00;53;03;24
It's a world restructuring material apart from its relation to cryptocurrency. So it's, you know, to me, I always was thinking about Silicon Valley capitalism as this like, you know, it'd be this, these, these money explosions around an idea, these kinds of manias, and then that could potentially be art supplies, or there'd be infinite funding for people who wanted to explore that space.
00;53;03;24 - 00;53;20;01
Right. And so you know, this one would be one of those, but it's coming from the call is coming from inside the from inside the blockchain or whatever. Right. It's coming from inside of crypto, which has more money than it knows what to do with. And, and generally, you know, just throws it like haphazardly all kinds of things.
00;53;20;03 - 00;53;42;16
So there is inevitably, you know, if I just cared about money, which I don't I would be probably working on the consumer product version of something that makes composable identity fact out of those things like proofs. Right? I, you know, because what you have is this kind of bundling and unbundling of, a lot of the power structures around, you know, all this like, you should own your own data.
00;53;42;16 - 00;54;01;09
All the Mark Zuckerberg is bad, all the Tristan Harris ain't up to Fucky Kate Crawford, 2010 state of politics. There's going to be a kind of response finally, through Programable cryptography, where you don't have to have this trusted intermediary. And and I don't even mean that like you need a crypto network. But guess what? It's also going to involve crypto networks.
00;54;01;14 - 00;54;26;00
And if you're an artist hearing me, there's just autographs sitting there. There's so many specific there's so many unique compositions that people are going to be able to make that were never possible to make before or that, you know, and if you take those materials seriously, you study them, you treat them with dignity. And then the trick is, by the way, you don't just do a tech demo, you don't just go where everybody is going to go ahead of them doing it.
00;54;26;00 - 00;54;44;08
Then you have something you say, then you make a piece. Don't be an on chain artist. Like that's not good enough. That's the starting position. Once you're an ancient artist in the sense of you learn the materials. But then what do you do with them? What's the composition? What do you have to say? And I'm telling you, the zero expert people have given you 20, 35 art supplies.
00;54;44;08 - 00;55;12;13
And if you don't believe me, I keep saying it like this Elon Musk has a mind writing company. Okay, it's not some professor in a lab who's got nice research and 50. It's an Elon company. The mind reading and mind writing company is an Elon company. So don't you think you might have a society that's going to be interested in like gadgetry that like, thinks about like information and privacy when you've got like a timeline full of 22 year olds in San Francisco talking about their mind reading startups or whatever.
00;55;12;13 - 00;55;35;05
And and it's just sitting there and I'm actually going to say the worst thing possible, which is, this is all boring. This is how lame our society is. I can sit and give you this map. This is formulaic, and if you did this, you'd get infinite points. So then there's even a bigger question, which is like, how do you go even further out on the actual, you know, along the asymptote toward along the asymptote, toward this archetype of artist, sort of like doing art history.
00;55;35;05 - 00;55;53;11
Is it just following the formula you heard from a guy on a podcast? Or like, what would it look like to inventor discover something like unthinkable and then to like, shatter the world that came before it, like, like people have done with things like, say, impressionism or yada yada. And so, you know, you could be you could be the next lava labs all day.
00;55;53;11 - 00;56;12;01
And by the way, I've been doing it. I've just been, you know, it's like, are you just he what does he do? He sits and he tweets all day. Sorry. No, I have xQc pieces. I put out. I spent a year thinking about one. I did one was August 22nd. I did another 1 in 2023. We're about to celebrate the one year anniversary of an unreleased project that we deployed in 2024, because I'm going to be here longer than you.
00;56;12;01 - 00;56;29;14
I'm just building a real art career, and you could do that too. So that's the other thing, is to stop telling the marshmallow test. Thank you for a long time. Squirrel away enough money to to live your artist's life, but then do your job and and I'm pretty sure eventually the world will. Well, yeah. Take notice. And anyway, sorry for going, but no.
00;56;29;16 - 00;56;37;10
Chris
No apologies at all. We are real long form here. We checked. Spotify is going to let us let our podcast go for 14 hours today.
00;56;37;13 - 00;56;43;14
Pri
So I was like, pump this into my veins. It's good news. Optimistic because if you're at the beginning of something I think.
00;56;43;14 - 00;56;49;22
Aaron
What do you think you can do with Programable cryptography? 113 when it comes to more creative media? Oh my.
00;56;49;22 - 00;57;04;19
God. Well, I mean, that's that's that's kind of asking what what paintings can you paint? You know, sort of like it's a really and by the way, today I'm going to leave this podcast and I'm going to go I'm going to go see one of my favorite painters has an exhibition or has a gallery show. So it's like, you know, he hates painters.
00;57;04;19 - 00;57;19;18
He he totally sold me. And it's like, oh, I'm going to go look at or owns painting. Think about them. What can you do? I'll answer it. I should answer it in the general. I can tell you about what I did, but it's kind of I still don't have a good elevator pitch. Okay. Right now, if you I it's.
00;57;19;18 - 00;57;37;05
This will take, I think, too long. I usually do this little exercise where I get people to think about, like, you know, imagine that you just. Okay audience at home. What I want you to do is get a little piece of paper and write on the paper things you might do secret messages, write DMs in emails, think about the entire history of emails and DMs.
00;57;37;05 - 00;57;54;16
You've said, okay, now write them like a handful of them. Some of them are going to be like, hey, what's up? Some of them are going to be like, I'll be at pizza at 5 p.m., right? Some of them are going to be confessional. It might be like, hey, I did this thing. When you're applying for a job, right, you need to prove to somebody or you make a claim about yourself, about something you've done.
00;57;54;18 - 00;58;10;06
And then there's 1 or 2. Maybe I want you to put, like, a big asterisk, like, scribble it, and it should be like, you can hear like a, like a, a drone humming, buzzing off it. It should feel like all radically large because it's a, it's something that it's a message you've sent maybe that you don't want to put in the entire world.
00;58;10;06 - 00;58;29;12
Right. Maybe at some point you said something that you just like you wouldn't want to put it on a billboard in times Square, right? So how do you do that right now? Well, you trust some guy, so, you know, I like to do this one. I'm like wandering the streets because I'm like, now, you know, imagine I hand because what you, what you just wrote is basically like all the, all your private information about all your private correspondence.
00;58;29;19 - 00;58;50;20
So what you do is you, like, now hand them to some guy. Well, but what if some guy gets bought by an advertising company, like. Or what? You know, like who, who has all that data. Right. So. But now what? What you can do is I tell people, crumple the paper up, okay? It's crumpled up so you can't see the written contents or, you know, this crumpled ball and it's effectively like it's encrypted, right?
00;58;50;22 - 00;59;18;24
So you could take that crumpled ball and you could put the crumpled ball in Times Square and it'd be fine, like, because maybe no one it's you, no one can actually crumple it. Right? They just kind of look at it or something. But now what you get with Programable cryptography is like a way to do things like selectively reveal facts, verifiable claims, or, you know, you could selectively reveal from that crumpled piece of paper some factoid, like when I've done this exercise, people say, I went to this school or I worked for this other company, great.
00;59;18;26 - 00;59;39;05
You can now selectively reveal that with a big public, you know, you can you can encrypt this information effectively, put it in public, and then selectively reveal or verify facts from it. You know, and you could what I'm describing is actually you could do this with something like a merkle tree and Merkle proofs. But what programable cryptography gets you is like computing for that.
00;59;39;11 - 01;00;02;13
So it's and oh this 113. This is so complicated. No it's not. Have you ever played poker? Have you ever been on a date? Have you ever read Shakespeare? Because that's all the same thing. That's all like interpersonal information asymmetry, right? I know that that the, in the audience knows that the character on stage doesn't know that the other character on stage killed the king or whatever.
01;00;02;13 - 01;00;20;13
Right? It's the play. It's drama, it's Shakespearean dramatic irony, it's flirting. It's, you know, it's information asymmetry is this clumsy word I have, but it's humanism, right? So you don't think, you know, computing is a is a it's like a book. I everybody wants to tell you AI is here to kill you. Go die in a ditch.
01;00;20;19 - 01;00;40;08
You're obsolete now. Sorry. It's the book. It's a site for making new meaning. You're. It's a site where the human relationship to it in this kind of weird acceleration is Sonic the Hedgehog. Where it's escalating. It's very intimidating, but it's still a site for making meaning how we value what we do with it. You know, it's and so, you know, programable cryptography, it's the same thing.
01;00;40;08 - 01;00;59;03
And what it does also it's a it's a tool for refigure and power structures. Like right now you have these central. You just think about the crypto rhetoric around like you know centralized intermediaries that like you know, okay. So another way to say it is because again, this is now computers. Like it's not just like reveal what school you went to.
01;00;59;03 - 01;01;18;08
It's it's it's composable secret computer programs. Another example this would be let's say think of some like, you know, several hundred year old math problem, but your professor is like, who's a figure everybody hates? Like, I don't know, your professor is a very evil professor. You know, your PhD student, you solved a 200 year old famous math problem.
01;01;18;10 - 01;01;39;08
Well, if you go give if you go prove it to the professor in their office, they might kill you and take it as their own. Oh. He died. He fell out the window. By the way, I just solved the two year, 200 year program. Okay, but what programable cryptography gets you is, you know, okay, another one. Go study Numerai, which I don't know if that even still is operating, but Numerai calls itself the last hedge fund, right.
01;01;39;08 - 01;01;58;13
It used it was it was using some form, I think a fully homomorphic encryption to let to put it's like crown jewels public data about or take it's private data about the market, put it in public and then make a competition for anybody on earth who could make the most money could now like participate. So it was this kind of new coordination gadget.
01;01;58;13 - 01;02;00;21
Aaron
It no, it still exists. Okay.
01;02;00;21 - 01;02;01;19
Great. Oh, cool. Yeah.
01;02;01;19 - 01;02;02;23
Aaron
They've been plugging along.
01;02;02;25 - 01;02;22;06
And yet we. So it's just that. So, you know, I like to say this is good. I can't keep going because it's going to go and go and go. But you know Bitcoin is to banks as you could call it like simulations markets or like these kind of programable cryptography computers are too valuable simulations. So like I'm not sure this is going to be the one.
01;02;22;06 - 01;02;41;22
But you could think of it like this right now, when you build a rocket or a computer chip, you build it with a compete. You build it in a computer, right? You run simulations, you have a model physics, you have a model of, you know, architecture, layouts of chips. So it's all in software, right. And what are the coordination devices society has right now for improving those simulations.
01;02;41;22 - 01;03;00;08
So valuable simulations. Right. Because it's worth a lot to Space-x or Intel or whoever to improve their rocket or improve their chip. Right. So what do they do? They're a private, centralized company that sucks up all the talent. And then the talent is locked up in it. You know, go read Brett Victor talking about his job at Apple.
01;03;00;10 - 01;03;18;29
It locks up all the thinking in the private thing. In another you could do. So what are the coordination gadgets society has for improving a valuable simulation. One is a company. Another would be like research and funding in academia, and maybe some public funding or some public publishing. But then they still patent stuff or what? Okay, but there's a new one.
01;03;19;01 - 01;03;39;29
I was calling it Simulation Markets, but it's based off of these programable cryptography gadgets because it's not just verifying facts, it's verifying like composable computer programs like you could make, you know, now if you just vibe codes, you know, it's just we're monkeys hitting a slot machine of of apps or whatever. But, you know, when you program, you can modularize designs and software.
01;03;40;02 - 01;04;01;05
So imagine that you could like, prove that you solved a math program to everybody on Earth without revealing the implementation until they pay you. Imagine that you could prove to everybody on earth, like think about like Etherium, but there's a new kind of computer. Rather than being the graphing calculator that is Ethereum, we can run a little DeFi and rinky dink, you know, small gas programs.
01;04;01;07 - 01;04;24;13
Maybe it's slightly more centralized, but the but the computer it expresses is like rocket simulation. And then everybody on Earth can arrive to this rocket simulator computer and try to make the rocket better. But how do they reveal, you know, how do you do that? Well, now, you could verify to them that you made this part of the rocket better, or this part of the computer chip better without revealing how you did it.
01;04;24;15 - 01;04;48;15
And it could be mathematically, cryptographically verifiable. And the last thing I'm going to say is go talk to GPT and figure out your homework is figure out why SSC has these two different features. One is you could call it information asymmetry. Think of it sort of like not just secrecy, but, you know, Shakespearean dramatic irony. Like I'm saying, you can you can select you can design what information is known and not known.
01;04;48;15 - 01;05;14;20
So when people hear SSC, they think about secrecy. But there's a very interesting second feature, which is what people have done is they've built virtual computers on top of the you could call it moon mass, on top of basically the the SSC gadgetry. And they they've used GK gadgetry to build a different kind of virtual computer. And now like at this point here in 2025, you can just write things like C and rust, okay, like risk zero SP1, blah blah, blah, blah blah.
01;05;14;22 - 01;05;45;06
You know, so you can write in traditional languages on a software for a virtual computer. And it has this side effect now, which is regardless of how complex the computation is, it might take a week to run some like a bit of computation, but effectively instantly. You can verify that computation now because it's built on top of the SSC computer or whatever, like because you arrange SSC to make things like circuits or other abstractions that let you express a computer, a virtual computer, you can write software for that.
01;05;45;06 - 01;06;05;05
And it comes with a side effect, which is you can verify for a given input. Certain computation was actually executed and it had a certain output. And you can do that instantly. And and this is how Ethereum right now has been trying to scale. But that's another world restructuring. You know that. So yeah these are just even if cryptocurrency didn't exist this is like you know there would be.
01;06;05;05 - 01;06;22;21
So many startups around this kind of thing. And so I'm just telling you, for an artist, an an artist is a person who studies are often, usually historically great artists often study the materials of the substrate they're on. Well, the substrate you're on right now is Ethereum, and it's a computer, and it's about to get these new art supplies.
01;06;22;21 - 01;06;38;17
And they're called things like programable cryptography. And it's your duty and your job to study them and learn them, and to be able to sink a thought in them. And then it's your. And then what's your voice? What composition will you make. And if you do it, you could just do the next autographs because nobody's trying. There's no competition.
01;06;38;20 - 01;06;55;12
It's wide open. And then everybody in crypto was so busy trading meme coins. When you show up and then wait three years, oh my God, they did something as big and as important as all of this. It's just formulaic. Just go study the Programable cryptography art supplies because there's so obviously the raw material, things like that.
01;06;55;14 - 01;06;56;06
Chris
Yes.
01;06;56;08 - 01;06;57;11
Aaron
Amen.
01;06;57;13 - 01;07;17;12
Chris
That was fantastic. My mind sometimes just here's a little snippet and then fires up the spool in the background or foreground depending, and just works it and works it. And in all of that I got hung up on anonymous flirting right? Well, just think about what you could create. What would.
01;07;17;12 - 01;07;20;14
Aaron
That be? Yeah. How you how you thinking about that, Chris?
01;07;20;14 - 01;07;51;07
Chris
Okay. So it's like it's true. It's true. And on. Right. It's like protected decontextualized anonymity in which the transmission of an idea back and forth and the development of it is the core, and there is nothing else getting in the way of it. There is no fear, there is no preconceived set of biases. There's though do I want to engage with this person because this other baggage associated with them is cringe?
01;07;51;09 - 01;08;16;18
Chris
It is like just stripped down. Here is an idea. Here is the thing we vibing off and we're exchanging back and forth. But it's also like amplified and supercharged because it's done through machines. Right. And so it's not like, oh, there's this person and I don't know if it's a guy or if it's a girl. I don't know if they're in America or not.
01;08;16;18 - 01;08;41;10
Chris
Right. And we're just going to like literally flirt. No, it's like I have a set of interests. Some other entity out there has a similar set of interests, but we have this entire assemblage of processing and power and like, ability to render up this idea into something. And we can do it in this way where, like we're completely insulated and protected around it.
01;08;41;13 - 01;09;02;15
Chris
We can choose to reveal it in the future if right, if what the end destination is worth sharing and if it's not, you know what? It doesn't matter, right? Like no one's going to laugh at us. No one's going to be like, oh, you spent all this time doing this, and you typed it up on Twitter, and then you minted this thing and like, you drugged me, and I hate you for it, right?
01;09;02;15 - 01;09;26;16
Chris
Like, it changes your relationship with time. It changes you like your relationship around boundaries or baggage or like it's a very freeing sort of thing. And it's also a toy, right? Like it. You know, you're not walking into this saying with pressure on you, saying, oh, I'm making capital art, or like I'm doing something that's going to result in a venture scale return.
01;09;26;16 - 01;09;52;12
Chris
It's literally flirting. And so you can treat it like a toy. You can do very silly and basic things with it until you figure out the pattern. And I just think this notion of anonymous flirting through a network in which you have these powerful devices attached, to your attraction, is this, like very joyous and enchanting sort of engagement pattern that could potentially, like, create very interesting things?
01;09;52;14 - 01;10;21;10
Aaron
Yeah, completely. I was even thinking that some of the Programable cryptography probably could be used to solve the issue of unchained royalties too, right? Like where you could probably embed in the NFTs some some like proof, where they would have to prove that royalties were paid before the transfer happened. Maybe there would be some clunkiness around that on the other side, but I think you probably could use this stuff to even play around with some of the commercial aspects of it.
01;10;21;12 - 01;10;40;11
Aaron
Not that that should be the primary focus, but I do think that is important. I do feel like that was part of the allure of, at least the initial wave for creators. Maybe that's how you kind of pull people into your zero zero spark, knowing that they're going to get a fair shake, and that kind of, taken advantage of by the large platforms.
01;10;40;13 - 01;11;01;00
Chris
Yeah. I mean, that is something you could do with it. I guess what I was trying to say is the fact that you're doing it in this form that's so far removed from these mechanics is very, very free. Right? Like you're in this environment of absolute secrecy, which means to some degree like form doesn't matter, right? And end result doesn't matter.
01;11;01;00 - 01;11;22;24
Chris
Like the constraint of I'm worried about secondary commissions while I'm already in the act of construction is completely eliminated because it's like you're operating in a void, so to speak. And so by the time like this is a little bit about like the relationship with time and the constraints of like environment, like you're unshackled from both of those things.
01;11;22;24 - 01;11;50;12
Chris
Right? Like if you're a digital artist who puts, you know, hashes of images, you know, and then uses NFTs as a network adapter, right? Like you've already like boxed yourselves so far in. And that's going to have like a real impact on what you're generating, if you're, like, anonymously flirting over a network and you don't know the entity you're flirting with or like assemblage of entities that you're flirting with, you don't know what you're informes going to be.
01;11;50;15 - 01;12;10;09
Chris
You don't you don't have that baggage associated with it. Like only when you get to an end state or where you can say, wow, Jesus, this is this thing is actually really interesting. Maybe we should now dox ourselves. Maybe this has gotten to a point where I want to know who I'm collaborating with, right? Because that's probably the first step in this thing.
01;12;10;11 - 01;12;27;16
Chris
But then be like when once we we figure that out and like, you know, we advance and we keep pushing this forward and forward forward. Now we're ready to share with the world what aspects of this do we want to share? Do we want to share ourselves? Do we want to share this as an app? Do we want to share this as an artwork?
01;12;27;16 - 01;12;49;01
Chris
Do we want to just share this as a data set? Right? Like then you've got all these set of choices about how you reveal that to the world. And I think that like really opens the space up as well. Like, you know, like not thinking in terms of like, is this effort going to lead me to superrare, to fellowship, to art blocks?
01;12;49;01 - 01;13;12;26
Chris
Right? Because when you have that, like in your head, you're already setting down a road that has an end destination versus like, I don't know, let's just roll with something and then you know what? Like, you know, we'll sail in open seas on this anonymous network and only when we finally have something do we figure out what port we are to take it into to, you know, then share it out and distribute to the world.
01;13;12;29 - 01;13;29;27
Aaron
I love it. I mean, I think that that's that's kind of your .113. Right? Like it's a whole new area to explore. Lots of fun mechanics. It seems like the tech is there. The future is here. It's people need to pick up these tools and start playing around with them. And they seem scary because they're called the zero knowledge producer cryptography.
01;13;29;27 - 01;13;36;09
Aaron
But the core underlying ideas behind it are understandable and discernible. If you put a little bit of work into it.
01;13;36;12 - 01;13;53;12
Absolutely. And, if, you know, yeah, it's going 22. This is like there's a piece I wanted to make after Terraform and I was like, oh, it needs a lot of transactions. Probably shouldn't be an L1. Is there an L2 that has the kind of Eternality feel that like math castles as a brand and as a set of values represents the answer was no.
01;13;53;18 - 01;14;08;08
There can't be like, there still isn't. And it's not that I don't think there are better. I don't think there are. There's bad actors. I just, you know, it took me to about, I don't know, 2019, 2020 to believe Etherium was going to stick around. And I was there since its first block. But I'm like, well, what is an L2 right.
01;14;08;08 - 01;14;29;21
And then I very I sound smart and fast. No, I'm very slow. It takes me a really long time. Right. But I just, you know, slowly, steadily tried to internalize as much as I could. And then and then as I made the pieces, I was like, telling myself by making the pieces, like, you know, the more and more I worked with the Xcom materials, the more I understood, like what I had done.
01;14;29;25 - 01;14;45;04
Like, it's also why I'm like this now, because it's a combination of all this stuff. Like I you'll see in time. I don't know how else to say it, but and that was just for me. And I didn't start out with, with that understanding even like it was like, oh, here's here's an interesting material. I don't really understand it.
01;14;45;04 - 01;15;00;04
It's intimidating. I'm not smart enough for this. I definitely I still I still I'm not a moon math researcher. I'm not a cryptography researcher. But it was getting to just the level where if I spent months and months, I could kind of like knock on the door of it. And Silicon Valley capitalism, they say no enough to be dangerous.
01;15;00;04 - 01;15;16;12
And so as an artist, I started to hit that threshold with it. And there's just tons of that kind of stuff. And in a place where again, it's just like, don't fail the marshmallow test. This is kind of what I think, you know, like another way I keep saying it is, look, I lived in Cryptopunks chat, you know, I'm watching all these fees come out.
01;15;16;18 - 01;15;38;02
You don't think I could have dumped, like, countless addictive animal projects on this culture and, like, extracted millions of dollars? I absolutely could have all day. But I was like, but what if you just try to do something real? Like what if rather than doing fly by night, you know, things that are like a product product sometimes bordering into a scam, it's like, you know what, I'm not hating on some of the object an adjective.
01;15;38;02 - 01;15;53;01
Animals are fine and all this, but I'm just saying, like it was like, no, if I just do a little bit more work and try and do something real, there's like not a lot of competition, even still. So yeah, I don't know. Anyway, I 100% just yeah, I just have to kind of do a little bit. It's exciting.
01;15;53;01 - 01;16;10;12
It's interesting. It's the same. You know, for me it's that same spark of curiosity and like, oh, what could this do? And like, oh I can, I can, I can almost think of a new kind of thing. I could think or do in this material and allowed to, I don't know. Yeah. I just, anyway, if anybody's interested in it to me, a message, I'd be happy to to chat about it.
01;16;10;12 - 01;16;15;07
Or maybe I'll post a course on it at some point, in the next year or something like this. But,
01;16;15;09 - 01;16;28;21
Aaron
Yeah, yeah, that seems like a great idea. Well, we've covered everything from the Habsburgs to Programable cryptography to anonymous flirting on the internet. I don't know where else we can go. Guys, I think we I think we've done it.
01;16;28;23 - 01;16;40;19
Chris
Yeah, well, we're already, setting a record time for a podcast here. We should always leave the people wanting more. But one thing, Aaron, what was the name of that podcast we've, like, subtly referenced several times there? This.
01;16;40;21 - 01;16;59;23
Aaron
Yeah. Give me doom scroll. It is a doom scroll. It's Josh Cinderella's podcast. Just give me a second. It was one of his one of his doom scroll. He's got like a couple of flavors of his podcast or like kind of sub sub thematics. It was doom scroll 15 with Quinn slow Bodying I don't know how to pronounce his last name, unfortunately, but it was great.
01;16;59;23 - 01;17;18;14
Aaron
I mean, it was, a nice critique. Some of the things we see in crypto from like network states to have it kind of fits into like a broader or potentially broader like approach to how the world should be structured and ordered. Definitely worth a listen. That gets the mind, gets the mind moving a bit.
01;17;18;17 - 01;17;44;28
Chris
It's also a history of neoliberalism, different strains and definitions of what neoliberalism is, is and then does give. Like for me, I think one of the better takeaways out of that was it gave me a stronger insight into the mindset. And, you know, maybe compromises that. I believe he calls them the exoteric and VC class. But, you know, kind of your Peter Teals of the world.
01;17;45;01 - 01;18;19;22
Chris
And you know why people who seemingly express libertarian values always also seem to want to package that up with like an authoritarian figure, you know, and like, why like, you know, zany ideas. Like, we should bring monarchies back, you know, actually, like, have some sort of rationality or a basis. And these people start because to me that was like a real head scratcher that, you know, this podcast kind of held down unlocked was like, yes, these people like really, really want free, uninhibited markets.
01;18;19;22 - 01;18;48;19
Chris
And they want to be able to, you know, run enterprises. On planetary scales with like, limited hindrance. But then they're also like, always ponying up with strongmen and like, you know, ultimately, what this podcast kind of teases out is like, they need these anchors to provide enough surety, you know, around structure of society, contract law, etc., etc. so that they can then run hog wild, right?
01;18;48;19 - 01;19;14;24
Chris
Like, you know, it's a bit of an insurance hedge. That was an eye opener for me, or at least kind of filled in the last pieces of the puzzle to like, yeah, something. I was just kind of scratching my head around because on the surface, or thinking of it strictly like in an ideological sense, like those things, you know, were conflicting, but you, it's more of like, oh, this is a real politic compromised as a means to an end.
01;19;14;26 - 01;19;36;00
Aaron
Yeah. I mean, the thing I've been thinking about a lot of that is always about preserving capital and protecting capital. Chris, like a lot of that, that thread, which I think is interesting, especially as we move deeper into the era of AI where it feels like labor may be devalued somewhat, and the importance of preserving capital is just going to increase over time, right?
01;19;36;00 - 01;20;03;07
Aaron
If capital is the scarce thing, and in this future world or the the scarce concept in this future world, then you probably want to lay down the foundation. Now to, to protect that, as opposed to wait till there's some inflection point or more tension between capital and labor. And I feel like if you're watching the news, you're already starting to see some of those, some of those battles begin to emerge.
01;20;03;09 - 01;20;15;05
Aaron
I think one way to frame what may be happening in South Africa right now may not be in terms of race. It may be more in terms of capital. So I think there's there's elements of that too.
01;20;15;07 - 01;20;42;04
Chris
But like the ironic thing is, right, like capital isn't scarce. Right. Like we are on a crypto podcast right now, you know, simply because the notion of like, scarce capital isn't true at all. But control over who gets to mint capital and where we decide to place trust and faith in things that, oh, this, this claim to capital is proving itself out.
01;20;42;04 - 01;21;09;20
Chris
As you know, it has story value properties or it has network fuel properties in which value can be created. Right? Like capital itself isn't scarce, but what capital we actually choose to embrace and, you know, give value to. Right. Like things that we we can all kind of come to a consensus around this is money ness, right? Whether it's not like strictly traditional money, that's what they want to control.
01;21;09;25 - 01;21;29;12
Aaron
I think it's they want I don't know if they can control that, but they I'd frame it a little bit different. I think that what qualifies as as money, that's a difficult right. And there's only a handful of things that have kind of crossed that Rubicon to have that money. This looks like some digital assets are crossing that Rubicon.
01;21;29;18 - 01;22;00;18
Aaron
But I do think a lot of folks are interested in crypto because of it's because of their ability to protect that capital, in earnest. Right? Because it exists above or outside of the state and is internet native and is in contact often by smart contracts. You do have much more agency to control that capital. And I think that that's why you see some of these folks that have the beliefs, and maybe they are in the lineage of kind of the, the neo neoliberal.
01;22;00;21 - 01;22;28;25
Aaron
I think that's why they gravitate towards crypto and, and digital assets, because they like the fact that they can control their capital. They like the fact that if there's any tension between capital and labor, they don't have to worry about it. And they're looking for, I guess, I mean, this is what the speaker on that podcast was saying that they're looking for, even potentially like an authoritative or monarchical leader, to just make that capital protection even clear.
01;22;28;29 - 01;22;30;01
Aaron
That was kind of my read of it.
01;22;30;08 - 01;22;54;10
Chris
Yeah. No, I, I see that that's a it's a good point in my, my, my brain is just flashing graeber's debt the first 5000 years now. Right. Because one of the things when I read that that just blew my worldview wide open, right, was money. At the end of the day, right? Money boils down to a set of like relationships and ordering between people.
01;22;54;13 - 01;23;19;03
Chris
Right? Like money isn't like money isn't matter, right? Like money is not this, like physical property of our universe, right? Money is an invention. And when you can finally kind of see behind that and then start getting into it, right. Like money, at least in Graeber's view of things, was really about kind of you achieved power through conquest by force.
01;23;19;03 - 01;23;49;23
Chris
You issued coins to pay your soldiers, right? That's like why money came to exist. But then once you had that power, right, you use money as a means of morality to justify your actions, right? Like people probably weren't excited that they got conquered, right? You know, like, no one's like, oh, look, this asshole warlord is now our new boss and and, you know, wants to lord it over us, like on a conscious level, you know, like an a level of morality, like that's never going to wash.
01;23;50;00 - 01;24;22;19
Chris
But if you put this instrument of money and you bind all these social relationships around that money, like you kind of force them to accept that, like your actions were justified, right? Like whether it doesn't, whether it passes a smell test on a human scale or like around a set of relationships, it doesn't matter anymore because you like bound the transactional nature of society, and you've placed these people, you've conquered into a debtor relationship or like into a subservient relationship where it doesn't matter if you or your beliefs hold water with their beliefs, right?
01;24;22;19 - 01;24;50;21
Chris
Like they have power over you through this instrument of money. And so, you know, that might be a lesson that like, you know, this. Yeah, this VC like, libertarian in class, like, is taking to heart and like, you know, we're now seeing them, you know, captured like the nation state apparatus especially here in the US. But like prior to doing that, you know, they they did kind of go down this road of like, well, what if we just invent all these new relationships out of whole cloth?
01;24;50;24 - 01;25;12;21
Chris
You know, that that's part of the appeal of the network state. But, you know, like cryptocurrency as a means of like stepping over an overlay of, of, like fiat money and the whole moral ordering that it had, they're like, oh, okay, we're just going to do that with crypto, crypto now and we can order this whole new set of relationships ourselves.
01;25;12;24 - 01;25;33;21
Aaron
Yeah. And I don't I don't even know if it's I think there's one way to view it that it's not even nefarious. It just they want. And a lot of folks do want they just want more individual autonomy and control over their property, right? Their capital. And I think that that's kind of what they're this group is kind of pushing towards.
01;25;33;23 - 01;25;57;14
Aaron
And they do want to kind of exist above and or around just traditional power structures, because those traditional power structures constrain them in some sort of way. And maybe, Chris, this is how they become the C people, right? They like, exist outside of all the traditional norms over time in their network states. Just kind of attacking it from within and, and from from the outside.
01;25;57;16 - 01;25;59;15
Chris
Yeah. Raid and disappear.
01;25;59;17 - 01;26;08;13
Aaron
Yeah. Or maybe not raid, but just like if you extract enough capital out, I mean, it's hard for folks that may not have capital to kind of survive in that, that.
01;26;08;15 - 01;26;21;01
Chris
Right. Like exist beyond the reach until you're beyond the reach is such a fortress and a hub of, you know, necessary interactions that then you become the new power.
01;26;21;04 - 01;26;42;26
Aaron
Yeah, I think it's more of that. It's like they you can exist beyond the reach. And I think, you know, one way to view even governments participating in that network, what they're saying implicitly by that is, well, that's not going to happen, right. Like we're going to be big players in this in this space too. And so that can be looked at by some is as being negative.
01;26;42;26 - 01;27;05;19
Aaron
Right? I think lots of folks see that as positive, but some people view that as negative. But at the same time it's kind of pragmatic too, on the part of a state or a series of states, like they're going to want to also have control over their assets and, and, and not let this kind of big group of people with a lot of new capital, digital capital, exist beyond their reach.
01;27;05;21 - 01;27;06;28
Aaron
And I think that's all healthy.
01;27;07;01 - 01;27;35;18
Chris
Yeah. No, that's a good point. So no, we're going to keep going. Yeah. Hold on. In a way. Right. Like you could kind of view Operation Choke .2.0. Right. As that attempt to isolate. Right. Like I mean, that's that's how we did, the Soviet Union eventually. Right. That's like finally how the Bolsheviks got their comeuppance is they were just isolated and starved to the point that they collapsed.
01;27;35;18 - 01;27;56;19
Chris
And I do think, you know, like the Biden regime was like, well, let's just do that right. Let's just, you know, take all the air out of the room on these people and, and let them fall over. And, you know, now that we had a, a change of administration, you know, there they they don't feel that way about crypto, right?
01;27;56;19 - 01;28;13;18
Chris
Like they've changed. They're like, oh, well, we're going to do this. And but we have to do it in a way in which we're co-opting this right? Like they can't exist beyond the reach. Let's bring them in from the cold rather than try to starve them out. Because the people we do want to isolate is going to be China.
01;28;13;18 - 01;28;19;05
Chris
We have bigger fish to fry than, you know, Joe wanting to, like, snuff out crypto.
01;28;19;08 - 01;28;38;02
Aaron
Yeah. And I think a lot of that stuff. I mean, there's legitimate concern that some of that capital is going to be used by the, you know, the quote unquote, bad guys. And I think a lot of what, least the modern Western world wants is just observability, right? They want to know what's what's happening. And with that comes like a degree of control.
01;28;38;02 - 01;29;00;12
Aaron
Right? There's a lot of folks that have talked at length about that, and I don't know if that's necessarily bad. I think the, the, the way that the previous administration just got it wrong is they thought that they could kind of hammered in and stop it, but you can't. Right. Like, even going back to what we described before, this is like an open growing petri dish, of activity.
01;29;00;18 - 01;29;20;22
Aaron
There's going to be more and more tokens. People like tokens. They want to collect them. They want to engage in this internet economy that internet economy is growing faster than the traditional economy. And in many parts of the world, including possibly the US. So that's the trends not going back into the station. So you do have to kind of absorb it.
01;29;20;22 - 01;29;39;05
Aaron
And I think that that's what we're in right now. Right. It's it's like installation phase, which means that you're going to see a lot more conversation about real world assets and all this other stuff, which is not all bad, but it's not all good. And then at the same time, I'm assuming we'll still see some really cool applications.
01;29;39;05 - 01;29;49;27
Aaron
Like what, you know, new forms, media, new types of primitives, like all these things that I think one, one three was, was, sagely musing on over the past hour.
01;29;49;29 - 01;30;11;25
Chris
Yeah, I mean, crypto where it is in this moment in time, like if you were to, pattern match it back to the settlement of the American West, right. Like crypto is Saint Louis, right? It's Saint Louis post Civil War. It is the last, like, kind of organized border town jumping off point before you get out into the wild wilderness.
01;30;11;25 - 01;30;37;07
Chris
But like that wilderness, you know, they're going to want to colonize it. They're going to want to settle it like the railroads, the telegraphs, the lawmen like, you know, all of that sort of like is coming into crypto right now the same way, like all of that went out of Saint Louis, you know, in like the 1850s, and onwards and eventually, you know, the West does get, you know, it's no longer beyond the reach.
01;30;37;07 - 01;31;02;10
Chris
There's no right to exit within it. But like, we will have XRP, you know, we will have other technologies. And I've always kind of viewed crypto that way, where crypto needs to function as a border town. It's a gateway and an, you know, kind of like a passing through point in which like a true digital frontier can actually interact with the rest of everything else because nothing can live on its own.
01;31;02;13 - 01;31;43;07
Aaron
Yeah. And I think that the what's on the other side of that is this broad new internet economy, right? Like a globally linked global economy that's not dependent as much on, you know, physical artifacts and national borders. And I think that that's what's exciting but also challenging. Right. And because you need both, like you need a home of some sort and I think that that's what the, and why we see lots of folks, even if they are like digital nomads or want to live on the frontier, they still want, you know, their, their farm, you know, in the Midwest, crisp like they want their whatever square of land where they could, they could,
01;31;43;09 - 01;31;44;18
Aaron
drop down some roots.
01;31;44;20 - 01;32;09;11
Chris
No. It's true. And like, look, people need to start framing it as, like they live and they live in multiplicities now, and maybe they need this intermediary point, right, in which they can switch between those two different things. But like, you know, where like, crypto serves that function, right? Crypto is that network adapter between like, I have a biological meet sack.
01;32;09;11 - 01;32;36;27
Chris
I have a physical body. Their body must live in a world that, you know, like is now bounded and cabled and gated. But then I do have this the sacred self, just intellectual self. This like the self that can reside on a network in which it can always be beyond the reach if it wants to be right. But like those two things, you know, like at the end of the day, like you know, we are we are constrained by like the world in which we live.
01;32;36;27 - 01;32;47;03
Chris
And so like we do need to like, rectify, like, you know, these two cells and provide some sort of gateway in which we can transmit between them.
01;32;47;05 - 01;33;08;16
Aaron
Yeah. And I think that that's what we're trying to do now. Right. But I think we've crossed kind of that hurdle where people now increasingly just know that, you know, the train's not coming back into the station, right? Like there is going to be westward expansion. And now the question is just how to do that in like, a reasonable, a reasonable way where you don't throw the baby out with the bathwater, hopefully.
01;33;08;18 - 01;33;32;11
Chris
All right, there we go. We've had our fake ending and now did it have a real ending? It was awesome. We got to thank Nick Hexum of 311 for coming on the show. Oh my treat. And thank you. 113. You've been a admirable fill in for Derek, who, will eventually return to the show. For Derek fans out there, don't worry, you'll get your Derek.
01;33;32;11 - 01;33;38;15
Chris
But in the meantime, I think 113 has been superlative as a fill in. And thank you very much, sir.
01;33;38;21 - 01;33;49;17
Oh, yeah. To a neutral or neutral enjoyment. No, y'all all the stuff y'all or our chatting on here is very, very interesting. And yeah, I think you have a very sharp minds. So, yeah, it's, my pleasure.
01;33;49;19 - 01;33;52;09
Aaron
All right. So we guys have a have a great rest. Your day.
01;33;52;12 - 01;34;01;08
Yeah. Talk to you. Cheers.
01;34;01;10 - 01;34;16;02
For.