Sir Tim Berners-Lee is auctioning his original source code for the web in the form of a “non-fungible token”, as digital collectibles continue to fetch millions of dollars despite the recent sell-off in cryptocurrencies.
The auction at Sotheby’s will be the first time that Berners-Lee has been able to raise money directly from one of the greatest inventions of the modern era, with the proceeds benefiting initiatives that he and his wife Rosemary support.
“The idea is somebody might like a digitally signed version of the code, a bit like plenty of people have asked for physically autographed copies of the book,” Berners-Lee said.
Auctioneers hope that the one-of-a-kind digital artefact will ignite interest in NFTs beyond their mainstay of artworks, games and sports memorabilia. Investment in NFTs has waned since March’s record-breaking $69.3m sale of Beeple’s “Everydays: The First 5000 Days”.
In an interview with the Financial Times, Berners-Lee, 66, said the auction was an “opportunity to look back . . . 30 years on from the initial code, which was very, very simple, to the state [of the web] now, which has some wonderfully simple aspects to it but also has a lot of issues of various sorts”.
Unlike the founders of Google, Facebook and Amazon, who gained enormous riches through the web, Berners-Lee is no billionaire.
The source code behind the world wide web and its first browser, which were conceived and coded by Berners-Lee between 1989 and 1991, was never patented. Instead, it was released for free into the public domain by Cern, the particle physics laboratory in Switzerland where the British scientist worked at the time.
The move enabled widespread uptake of a technology now used by more than 4bn people every day. But for potential archivists and collectors, it also complicated the idea of authenticating Berners-Lee’s original work.
“The fantastic thing about NFTs is we can create this digital provenance document, proving the authenticity coming from the creator,” said Cassandra Hatton, global head of science and popular culture at Sotheby’s. “This will become the reference point for all others. It really is the most appropriate, quintessential digitally-born artefact” for an NFT auction, she added.
While Berners-Lee said the NFT project was his “first foray into crypto”, he sees similarities in his original vision for the web and the philosophy behind the decentralised network of the ethereum blockchain, which underpins most NFTs. It also chimes with his latest project, Solid, which is designed to give individuals back control of their own personal data.
“The blockchain and Solid communities share the motivations of wanting to empower people,” Berners-Lee said, adding that many blockchain projects are motivated by “avoiding central control”.
He originally conceived the web as a collection of personal pages that link to each other, rather than being dominated by a handful of giant corporations. “It was supposed to be individually empowering,” he said.
He fears that online monopolies “automatically hamper innovation” and sees a “huge backlash” among regular web users who are concerned their data is being used to manipulate electorates.
Today, Berners-Lee serves as chief technology officer at Inrupt, which is developing commercial applications based on his Solid framework. The technology is being piloted by the government of Flanders and parts of the NHS, among others. Inrupt is now beginning its “first serious round” of fundraising, Berners-Lee said.
“We won’t be able to make a better world without both tech and policy changes,” he said, “but fortunately, they’re happening at the same time.”
Almost $650m worth of ethereum has been spent on digital artworks such as NFTs to date, according to Cryptoart data, which tracks trading volumes. Several “CryptoPunks”, pixelated portraits that form one of the first series of NFTs, have sold for multimillion-dollar sums, the most recent going for a record $11.8m in a Sotheby’s auction just last week.
However, NFT volumes fell month over month in April and again in May, according to Cryptoart, alongside a wider sell-off in cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin.
After artists including Damien Hirst and musicians such as Grimes have experimented with NFTs, Sotheby’s is presenting its auction of Berners-Lee’s code as among the first to offer crypto collectors a historical artefact. Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey sold his first tweet for $2.9m in March.
In more traditional auctions, handwritten manuscripts by Alan Turing and Albert Einstein have sold for more than $1m. Leonardo da Vinci’s Codex Leicester was bought by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates for $30.8m in 1994.
Hatton said the winning bidder of Berners-Lee’s NFT would “get to own what would be analogous to the manuscript” for the web.
Berners-Lee first outlined his idea for the web in a memo in 1989, but he did not begin writing the code that implemented it until September 1990.
The package being auctioned includes Berners-Lee’s original archive of time-stamped files for the WorldWideWeb browser, a 30-minute animation and digital “poster” of the code, and a letter explaining the background to his invention.
Bidding runs from June 23-30 and starts at $1,000.
https://news.google.com/__i/rss/rd/articles/CBMiP2h0dHBzOi8vd3d3LmZ0LmNvbS9jb250ZW50L2E3N2FkMWJmLWZhZTAtNDc4Yi1hYTA1LWEwNzc5MDMxNGViY9IBAA?oc=5
2021-06-15 11:01:45Z
52781670657021
Tidak ada komentar:
Posting Komentar