My current writing project is around blockchain and the entertainment industries, and mostly involves sorting hype from legitimate ideas. This is one of the first not-super-conceptual academic pieces I’ve written, so it’s interesting to sort through a whole bunch of reportage, blogs, videos, and just get a sense of what the current atmosphere around something is.
In this case, that ‘something’ is blockchain, crypto, NFTs, and how, in the wake of That Sale, everyone wants one, is selling one, or is just trying to understand one.
In much of my work — particularly around cinema — the films I’m writing about, or the technology of film itself, has been around long enough for a wide variety of opinions and theories to have circulated and settled. In this case, with web3, it does occasionally feel like it’s happening live.
If you try to get above the arguments, rage, and gatekeeping (I see you, unnamed social media platform rhyming completely unironically with ‘bitter’), the kinds of questions being asked are legitimately interesting and important. And those contributing to the discussion are a unique mixture of techs/programmers/engineers, artists, philosophers, and media pundits.
Soon, a favourable peer review pending, I guess I’ll be one of them.
