NFTs finally allow digital cultural artifacts to be made into rival goods, allowing artist and creatives to capture appropriate and meaningful value from their work. NFTs are the final piece closing the loop for ‘networked cultural production’ (theory here is heavily influenced by Yochai Benkler’s ‘Wealth of Networks’).
People have had the tools (and creativity) to create cultural artifacts in a decentralized way (think of all the artists that uploaded work to the internet like The Weeknd and Justin Beiber). They also had the network (social media) to distribute or “advertise” their work. But they had no appropriate way of capturing value directly from it. There were two ways of making a living: 1) fall back into the “industrial” information economy (sign with centralized IP management, record label, TV / movie studio - see the Radiohead example below) or 2) hack revenue via your individual brand through sponsored content and on platform advertising.
Radiohead famously released their 2007 record In Rainbows on the internet and asked the user to name their price (including $0). Per Thom Yorke: “We [had] a moral justification in what we did in the sense that the majors and the big infrastructure of the music business has not addressed the way artists communicate directly with their fans... Not only do they get in the way, but they take all the cash."
We didn’t have is the marketplace for creators of cultural artifacts to capture value and be appropriately rewarded because previously all digital cultural artifacts were non-rival, that is extremely right-click-save-able and downloadable. With NFTs this digital non-rival good has become rival, which allows people to own it and allows the creator to capture appropriate value from the artifact itself not the advertising around the artifact.
Rival digital cultural artifacts are a big deal. Are we going to spend more or less time interacting with them in the future? Are we going to spend more or less time online in the future?