The featured image is an unauthorized remix of “Fake Internet Money #607” by Steve Pikelny. This essay is intended as a creative exploration of Jihad’s invitation to “describe a higher vision of the future,” and does not constitute investment advice.
The more it circulates, the more value it has.
One of the great benefits of NFTs entering popular discourse in 2021 was the number of art critics and theorists that pierced the bubble of pseudo-intellectualism that characterized the cultural discussion around digital media.
What I’m actually describing is how people began to understand the paradox of digital scarcity while digital objects themselves can be spread far and wide through the web. Notions of NFTs as masters or intellectual property never quite satisfied the ways I was seeing them challenge old models of compensating creativity and while creating online tribes that furthered their virality.
One of my favorite theorists that attempted to answer this question in 2017 was McKenzie Wark in “My Collectible Ass.”
“Paradoxically, an object whose image is very widely spread is a rare object, in the sense that few objects have their images spread widely. This can be exploited to create value in art objects that are not in the traditional sense rare and singular. The future of collecting may be less in owning the thing that nobody else has, and more in owning the thing that everybody else has.”
Her brief art history survey describes the first era of art as objects that are rare in themselves. The second major era of art was art as a commodity. She argues that we are now in the third era of art, where value is defined by its spreadability.
“What establishes the value of the work is that people talk about it, write about it, circulate (unauthorized) pictures of it. The more it circulates, the more value it has. The actual work is a derivative of the value of its simulations.”
The Aspirational Economy
One idea that ties together many trends we’re seeing in crypto today is the “aspirational economy,” where consumer behavior is influenced by aspirations for a certain lifestyle, status, or identity.
If the value of digital objects are characterized by spreadability, what are the machinations that make this possible in the aspirational economy?
A simple framework used by brands is the idea of creative class categories of connoisseurs, superfans, selective buyers, and skimmers. Consumers make creators, curators, and brands big, thanks to their social influence, taste and following.
The higher model
One of the first things that struck me with the higher collective is that it both presents a vision of value in contemporary art, and functions within the machinations of the aspirational economy. It’s less about the individual art casted each hour to the /higher channel on Farcaster, and more about the derivative value of all its simulations.
As LGHT describes it, “Higher is emergent, decentralized, and crypto coordinated. It has a memetic icon, a token, a channel, and a philosophy.”
A higher vision of the future
Higher represents more than just a digital art project with a token; it symbolizes a paradigm shift in how we perceive and participate in the aspirational economy. Value in the contemporary art world is increasingly defined by spreadability rather than traditional notions of rarity or originality. Increasingly, crypto won’t just be about ownership, but about participation and circulation within a decentralized community.
What does this mean for other ideas, art or otherwise, that animate web3? The ones that provide the best templates for reproducibility may stick around longest in our collective imagination. The ones that target both superfans and skimmers may reach the greatest scale.