Very Long Author’s Note: I wrote this blog originally for my long dusty Medium account, a month or so prior to joining a web3 research & design studio called Superlunar. I hesitated to publish and share it because I was still feeling out the space, and trying to determine what my level of involvement—if any—would be. I wanted to ensure that being a part of the web3 + crypto community in some way aligned with my personal values and felt like the right thing to contribute my skillsets to.

Now around three weeks into my new role as a visual designer in the web3 space, I feel ever more confident that I embarked on the right journey. This space, frankly, is challenging in many ways. But challenges are exactly what research and design were built for. Good challenges. Worthy challenges.

As builders, developers, creatives, we are tasked with untangling complexities so that ourselves and the people around us might understand better, share in our visions, and help build a world that we are mutually engaged with. In my perspective, the things that the web3 space is currently associated with—the hyperbole, the crypto gold rush, the manic enthusiasm or stalwart skepticism and scorn—are small byproducts of a digital society being faced with an uncertain and extremely untrod territory. In reading think pieces both for and against these new technologies, the thing that consistently resounds is a circular obsession with what the technology either “promises” to do, “can’t” do, or is duplicating an existing effort poorly. Few, outside of the UI/UX space, write think pieces discussing specific solutions, ways of problem solving, or considering that the way technologies are currently implemented simply need to be reevaluated more thoughtfully.

What makes this space worthy of exploration is its potential to be more than what many—on both the devoted and skeptical sides—currently believe it to be. Whatever the realized vision of web3 is, we’re nowhere near it, and may in fact be wandering further off as the community and mainstream focuses on things that—for all intents and purposes—may have little lasting value. As participants in innovation, we collectively have an obligation to scrutinize the vision of web3, and see if we can build something that genuinely feels like a step forward.

So, um, David Cronenberg’s being weird again—very on brand—with non-fungible tokens this time. And frankly…hear me out…I’m beginning to think that this decentralized web/NFT stuff is kind of interesting. But not for the reasons you think.

While Cronenberg recognizes that kidney stones may not fit the normal concept of art, he maintains that by intentionally removing them from their original context and providing a new one, they are elevated to this status, making a conscious nod to Duchamp’s readymades and perhaps, though inadvertently, the more recent Trash Art movement, where artists appropriate found digital imagery in a manner Duchamp would approve of. Calling attention to the exciting and unimaginable prospects that new innovations like blockchains and VR can afford the art world, Cronenberg largely embraces the possibilities of the future while keeping an eye on the fundamental questions that have always existed within artistic exploration. “For me,” he stated, “the whole NFT thing induces a wonderful philosophical investigation of what the reality of art is.” [source]

I consistently feel the need to underscore this: I am no crypto fangirl. The hysteria, passion and discourse in the overall space gives the same energy as a fight breaking out at a sports game—it’s weird, confusing and generally something I avoid making direct eye or mental contact with.

That said, ever since mid 2021, the bug of curiosity caught me. The bite came from that intangibly buzzing invention somewhat nebulously called “crypto”. Before I get into what David Cronenberg’s kidney stones have to do with anything, here’s some context for where the interest and curiosity came from.

CNBC had a surprising read about a practical use-case of digital currency in a region fraught with political turmoil. It was something that, in my ignorance around financial nuances in international cases, I didn’t realize could be real— outside of fictional depictions of some society’s slow decent into dystopia. Imagine standing outside of a bank hoping to withdraw cash that no longer exists.

Many banks were forced to shutter their doors after running out of cash this week. Photos featuring hundreds of Kabul residents crowding outside branches in a futile effort to draw money from their accounts went viral. [Source]

Not long before I came across this article, I’d watched a show called Years and Years, which followed a British family as they move through a rapidly evolving social, economic, political and technological landscape. A scene early in the series, which sets off a number of pivotal events in the stories narrative, was particularly memorable to me in its absurdity.

Reading about the real life young Afghani who had resorted to leveraging cryptocurrency to help his family survive in a socio-political wild west felt like being rudely awakened to a future that originally seemed fictional. The palpable desperation of it all was somehow now too close to home, and impossible not to empathize with. I glanced at my stack of plastic debit and credit cards with newfound uncertainty. [sarcasm] Could something like this happen here, in America? Where everything is arguably fine? [/sarcasm] For people in struggling “third world” nations, or those living in and below the poverty line in “first world” nations, could their economically suffocated lives find some relief through something as intangible, seemingly inaccessible, and difficult to grasp as digital currency?

For the most part, my interaction with crypto, and other web3 properties has been from a distance. I am occasionally enraged (rage part 2), conflicted, and disgusted by stories in mainstream media that surface about this new digital landscape. As a creative professional working within the information security space, crypto and web3 has—in all honesty—been far more difficult to wrap my head around than security was. With security, while the nuances can be complex to unpack when you’re trying to obtain context and tell a clear story, the thematic issues in the space ultimately are fairly straightforward to understand:

• Security is both a menagerie of products and philosophies, as well as a way of life in the modern world. Despite being regularly assailed with cliched messaging and advertising around “cyber”security, the average person does eventually understand the general idea around it fairly quickly when educated. Don’t use the same password for everything…don’t click strange links…protect your digital and physical ass(ets).

• For technologists and customers in the security space, beyond the array of new products and buzzwords being launched on the regular, a pretty consistent theme generally rises to the top: how can they simplify and make what they’re building, buying, or implementing more user friendly, frictionless, and scalable?

But what are the similar bullet points for decentralized technologies? That’s not something I can personally define just yet, even off the top of my head. How do you unpack the “blockchain”, cryptocurrencies, and the decentralized web in a similar way? What is the blockchain, and all this “decentralized” verbiage? What is the value of web3 technology to the average person, or a potential buyer, or a builder? What makes cryptocurrencies and digital assets more advanced than things you can put in your pocket or assign physical value to?

Perhaps we can confidently identify web3 technologies as a menagerie of products, but what are they really for, who are they benefiting, and what’s the philosophy around the landscape? If security is the idea of building technologies to secure the data of businesses and individuals—both physically and in terms of providing peace of mind—then in a similar vein, what is this new technology solving for?

And, with appropriate bizarreness, those questions lead me back to Cronenberg’s kidney stone NFTs. To speak of what value the technology has—or what it’s trying to solve for—non-fungible tokens are perhaps one of the most visible elements in that developing narrative.

As a creative and someone liable to support other creatives monetarily, I still have yet to buy (literally and figuratively) into the idea of NFTs being more or less valuable than any other piece of digital art. I’ve dimly accepted that the general concept is to validate ownership of a thing. But for me, ownership and intrinsic value is still held in more analog—and often more financially accessible—mediums. I will participate in micro-transactions for video games, buy art from favorite artists and designers, order collectibles and tchotchkes related to content I enjoy (still a bit unclear why I would get a digital Funko over a regular plastic Funko), and I will buy tickets to music concerts that I want to be a part of. (If I could afford it, the only NFT I would ever probably buy is from ODESZA, because I am a hopeless fangirl and their content does hold a lot of value to me)

I think what NFTs are, in their current iteration, is a symbol of how the perception of value and ownership might be changing, thanks to the new technological foundation of the distributed ledger. Specifically in terms of NFTs, I think that there is value in them for artists who desire a consistent, trackable way of generating income, growing their audience, and verifying/defending themselves as the original authors of content. It’s famously an imperfect and troubling landscape ethically and environmentally. But as with everything else that exists courtesy of distributed ledger technology, it arguably holds a certain admirable promise that, despite all the noise around it, doesn’t seem to have been fully explored.

To return to Cronenberg’s idea of “embracing the possibilities of the future” while monitoring fundamental questions that have already been formed, I think he, and many folks gingerly navigating this new space have an overlooked point:

As artists, creatives and technologists, we especially have a responsibility to explore uncharted territories, particularly if they hold potential for the everyman; for the people who make up the core functions and bodies of humanity. The air around these new technologies is currently electric with hot takes, disdain, overhype, complexity, anger, love, passion and every other emotion you can think of. It’s a scam, it’s the way of the future, it’s going to be yesterday’s news once the hype cycle is over. By virtue of being uncharted territory, technological innovations have to undergo a proving process where they are established as either valuable inventions that contribute to the edifice of society, or resolve as gimmicky washes that were nice ideas with little practicality.

Web3 and company are still proving themselves. And bad actors are currently overwhelming a narrative that has yet to be fully written out. For the sake of everyone who might be able to benefit from this new innovation, it might be prudent to just hold court for a minute and think about what can really be done with this—and pivotally, how it can be leveraged in effective, sustainable, and lasting ways. The now ancient innovations of those who came before us left a lasting mark on how we move in the modern world. Their challenges, struggles and earnest endeavors to leave bold and memorable marks on history did not go unrecognized, and certainly will always be remembered. What mark will our generation leave?