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</o:shapelayout></xml><![endif]--></head><body lang=EN-US link="#0563C1" vlink="#954F72" style='word-wrap:break-word'><div class=WordSection1><p class=MsoNormal>I’ve been reading layman articles on NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens), wondering if and how they will relate to OAIS, and whether they might someday surface in OAIS standards. Today one in particular in Wired magazine… <o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><a href="https://www.wired.com/story/www-code-nft-tim-berners-lee-auction/">https://www.wired.com/story/www-code-nft-tim-berners-lee-auction/</a><o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>(Wired only allows you to view 4 or 5 articles without a subscription)<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>…caught my attention when it said: <o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:.25in'>“Nothing could be a greater cultural and ethical shock to archives than NFTs.” Prelinger argues that monetizing historically significant holdings could make important documents less accessible to genealogists and other scholars without deep pockets. Weber shares those concerns, as the Computing History Museum doesn’t have the deep pockets of independent crypto-millionaire collectors; if minting code as an NFT becomes a standard, collecting historically significant copies of code for the museum’s software library could become more difficult. In some NFT sales, the original digital artifact is subsequently removed from the web…<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>And in the conclusion:<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal style='margin-left:.25in'>While this won’t change the way anyone uses the web, it is likely to have ripple effects in how archivists and collectors approach the storage of digital objects—and how the next generation of computing geniuses decide what to do with their achievements.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>If fabricating an NFT did not have such high cost and environmental impact, I could envision a future time where NFTs are so widely accepted that anything less is considered “inferior provenance.” But then high cost and environmental impact haven’t stopped society from other questionable activities, so NFTs could become “standard” regardless. <o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Perhaps a topic for a side discussion in our DAI telecons. (Which unfortunately I won’t be able to attend for the next two weeks.) <o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#002060'> -=- Mike<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#002060'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal>Mike Kearney<span style='color:#002060'><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#002060'>Huntsville, Alabama, USA <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p></div></body></html>