DESIGN BLOCKCHAIN 2

Do you want your design to be done by a human or by the machine?  This will be one of the key questions as we move toward automation.

Authenticity, as I said a few pages ago, will be the only relevant currency.  Either what you are looking at / listening to, be it a drawing, sonata, photo, movie, etc., will be created by a human or the machine.  And I predict that human created designs, symphonies, etc., will have greater value than that generated by the algorithims in machines.  In the same way that we currently value hand woven and knitted garments over fabric produced by the machine.

This hunch, this ‘prediction’ of mine was reinforced as I read the article titled Afterimage by Joshua Rothman in the 12 Nov issue of The New Yorker.  The article is concerned with the authenticity of photos and movies.  It presents the basic problem that with machine synthesized photos and movies, we are loosing, at a rapid rate, our ability to discern between what is real and what is fake.  An example is used of a synthesized movie of Obama saying things contrary to his beliefs.  Most people who see the movie think it is real.  How will we know what is real and fake?

For a nice primer on Ethereum blockchain which explains this as clearly as I have seen anywhere, here is a link to a page a Coincentral’s site.

One company called Truepic is starting to do something about synthesized, or fake, photos.  They provide a verification service in which you take a photo with their app.  That photo is uploaded to their servers, which proceed to perform a series of verification tests including geolocation, barometric pressure readings, time, etc., all of which contribute to the verification of the photo.  This is what the lens really saw.  This is not synthesized.  This is what we would call a real, or authentic, photograph.  Once verified, the photo is entered into the Bitcoin and Ethereum blockchain, which will allow it to be shared as authentic.

As stated on the previous Design Blockchain page, an Ethereum type blockchain can easily be scaled to the problem of design authenticity.  With increasing synthesis, humans will want to maintain that human connection.  They will want their designs done by a human.  And they will want this to be verified.  Startup, anybody?

While the article never once uses the word analogue, I will.  Designs, sonatas, drawings, created in the analogue will have even greater value.  We will want the imprint, the effect, the haptic sense of the involvement of the human hand, moving and operating in real spacetime.

And we will want to know that the design itself is authentic.  We will demand designs with a high Provenance Quotient.  We will not want designs that are basically copied from others or from magazine photos.  Designs with the highest value will be the ones that are most authentic.  And we will want this design trail, if you will, verified.  Design Blockchain.  Enter a design sketch into a verification algorithm, and the authenticity will be verified.  When that occurs, real value is created.  And to make this a reality, we will need to develop methods which we use to create fresh and exciting forms.

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I used the drawing at the bottom for my Drawing From Drawing at the top.  The simple overlay of the 2 Henry Moore forms gave me the knowledge to expand this concept, which is what we see at the top of the page.  This sketch to sketch provenance would be verified by Design Blockchain.  And nothing will be as easy to verify as an analogue sketch, or drawing.

1.  Rothman, Joshua. “Afterimage.” The New Yorker. October 12, 2018. Print. p34