Code, assets, and people

Tue 03 December 2024, Philippe Ropenga digital assets artificial intelligence

You know that I value the autonomy of software developers, tech entrepreneurs, and generally anyone who interferes with assets that may be tangible or digital because I think freedom becomes useless without it.¹ The interest of a given person matters as much as the ability to make use of a piece of information. The world is often seen as a data-centric place where anything can be disrupted and is nonetheless preserved by regulators who take care of anything.² Disruption through big data relies on a massive infrastructure.³ A thing is more than data. Baudrillard explains in a book first published in 1981 that the belief that more information leads to more meaning drives more attention to the medium than to the message, and that both medium and message ultimately neutralise each other.⁴ Following Baudrillard’s work on simulacra, Ritzer notes that computer code enables one to create new ways of consumption through simulacra.⁵

There have been mobile phones before the iPhone and Apple Inc that once specialised in computers decided that a terminal connected to the Internet could be carried around in every pocket.⁶ This terminal has been sold as and seen as a phone since then. Baudrillard explains that the simulacrum has something in common with the original object, for instance, a feature that dials and receive phone calls. This similarity leads to equivalence between the two objects that are distinct from one another.⁷ This casts a new light on the metaverse. It exists and its popular success will probably be a new version of something that exists but no one seems to know precisely what it is. As soon as one feels the equivalence, one thinks about technology to achieve it and to turn into a commercial success. Technology is just an extension of personal knowledge.

In brief, focus on people and knowledge, not on technology nor data when evaluating an AI project or digital assets.

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