For a long time, I was fascinated with the metaphor of a machine for anything to do with information technology, but in reality IT is more abstract than that. The same inputs would produce the same outputs, but it doesn’t really seem to work that way. Information technology is more abstract than that. It is more stochastic than deterministic.
Ultimately, information is really in the eye of the beholder, much like abstract art.
Sure there are psychology methods that you can use to direct people to see something and influence them to reach the same conclusion as you…
“Dashboards…” anyone…
But ultimately, all information is an abstraction. It is an abstraction and a translation of some reality. Which reality? Who knows?
There are different levels of abstraction around Information. While the physical world in which we live in is built on abstractions like currency, property rights and contracts, the digital version of this world is built on abstractions of abstractions.
The emergence of non fungible tokens (NFT) to represent the value of a digital object is just the next step in placing value on intangible items. Right now, the value of NFTs may seem absurd, but in some way they may be the most trusted way to document and convey value.
However, the problem with NFTs and Blockchain, in general, will be understanding and trusting the decentralized platform. Due to the technical complexity off blockchain it is going to take a lot of time to feel like you aren’t being scammed. Everything that makes blockchain awesome is also what makes it very scary.
Just as the adoption curve for e-commerce was long, it will take a long time until people are comfortable transacting with the blockchain. Even though most of the value in the world is represented by an abstraction, IT is more abstract. As we learn to invent, capture and document digital value that is more than an electronic representation of our current methods recognizing value.
Photo by anarchosyn 
