English | EN 
On the 15th of October our book “Real Fake – Playing with Reality in the Age of AI, Deepfakes and the Metaverse” has been released. It is our take on synthetic media, deepfakes, fake news, conspiracy theories, virtual humans, NFTs, the Creator Economy and the Metaverse. Real Fake is about how humans continuously manipulate reality and how new digital technology tools enable us to go one step further in this ancient game.
Probably Nothing
“In the last 7 days Adidas has partnered with coinbase, launched a POAP [=Proof of Attendance Protocol] token, created a brand space in Sandbox & are now entering into an apparel collection with the two OG [=Original] PFP [=”Picture for Proof” or “Profile Picture”] projects…BAYC + Cryptopunks.“
Read my Dutch article Why we have to take Cryptopunkers serious.
Probably nothing.
The Whitelist Game
“Whitelisting is where a wallet address is approved prior to minting, meaning that they will be able to sign in and purchase the said NFT on the set date. […] Whitelists are significant given that they avoid gas wars. […] Each project is different and has its own method of whitelisting, but perhaps the most renowned currently is the whitelist game. […] The sheer volume of eyeballs on the project is unprecedented and is a testament to the promo and marketing from the whitelist game. Where previous projects ensured that collectors were ready on the dot for the mint, the introduction of whitelist games has encouraged collectors to have their eyes peeled at all times.”
In An Era Of Virtual Socialising, Get Ready For Virtual Influencers
“With bleached hair, rainbow leggings and a red cheetah-print jacket, Kai looks fairly innocuous within the bombastic world of Roblox. But when she gets on stage, thousands of players come to watch. She’s mobbed whenever she visits clubs that other players have created, has millions of views for her music videos on YouTube, and is fiercely defended by fans. But while she’s often referred to as an artist or creative, in truth Kai is an avatar for an amalgam of people, her music and videos professionally produced and her appearances strictly managed.”
The Token Disconnect
“After looking at this phenomenon for the last decade, I’ll give what I believe is the first rough draft of history. Silicon Valley ran dry on large breakthroughs in software, so we decided to invent the “blockchain”, a simulacrum of innovation that organically fermented from the anti-institutional themes in the Western zeitgeist to spawn an absurdly large asset bubble with absolutely nothing at the center. There is no there there, and crypto morphed into a pure speculative mania which attracted a fanatic quasi-religious movement fueled by gambling addiction and the pseudo-intellectual narrative economics of the scheme. All conversation around crypto is now simply the sound and fury of post-hoc myth making to rationalize away the collective incoherence of the bubble in a near perfect exemplar of the motivated reasoning of economic determinism.”
Crypto tokens allow venture capitalists to dump their investments on an enthusiastic public without regulation, in the midst of a speculative mania…
The Rise Of Neo-Conglomerates
“As General Electric and other old-school behemoths break up, Amazon, Apple, Alphabet, Microsoft and Meta are taking their place as the do-everything companies of the future. […] But there are important differences between today’s tech conglomerates, which continue to grow in value and scope, and those of yesteryear, say those who study the history of the subject. The way today’s big tech conglomerates glue their products together into “platforms” makes them potentially much more dominant and long-lasting than the industrial conglomerates. […] The large companies of yesteryear bet on things like economies of scale in manufacturing—everything gets cheaper to make, the more you make of it. Modern platform companies take advantage of something unique to the internet age. That something is demand-side economies of scale, which arise because platform companies are taking advantage of network effects. […] In today’s world, demand-side economies of scale, driven by every additional user, developer, marketplace seller, and advertiser added to a platform, mean that tech conglomerates are playing in markets that tend toward monopoly or at least oligopoly. That gives them tremendous power and, potentially, resilience for the long term.”
So where is the regulation?
Can a Digital Reality Be Jacked Directly Into Your Brain?
“The idea of a synthetic experience uploaded to the mind has been a sci-fi fantasy forever. New brain-computer interfaces are making it nonfiction—very slowly.”
Who will be in control of my thoughts in the near future? Will it be me or a Big Tech company?
The Conspiracy Chart 2021
The Perfect Metaphor For AI
