Take home an “autographed” version of the original WWW source code…if you have a few spare millions lying around.
Bidding for Source Code for the WWW, an NFT by World Wide Web creator Sir Tim Berners-Lee, has hit $2.8 million.
Sotheby’s is auctioning the non-fungible token. The auction closes on Wednesday.
It’s an interesting piece of digital art representing one of the more important inventions of our time. I’m referring to the WWW, not NFTs. Yet, the auction price is more about excitement about NFTs than it is about the WWW.
The bidder will take home a copy of the original source code, an animated visualization of the code being written, an SVG file of the full code, and a letter written in the README.md file (in “markdown” format) by Berners-Lee in June of 2021, reflecting upon the code and his process of creating it.
Of course, if you want to get this stuff without paying for it, you can visit the auction page today and save it to your hard drive.
The only thing missing is the “autograph”, which is how Berners-Lee views what he is selling: an autographed version of code of the first web browser.
Anonymous says
“Of course, if you want to get this stuff without paying for it, you can visit the auction page today and save it to your hard drive.”
Hahahahaha! So true.
Alan says
You can also buy a print of the Mona Lisa for $5 but it’s not the same thing )
Andrew Allemann says
Yeah, but with most digital art is the exact same thing.
John Berryhill says
That was AM radio, Andrew. This is FM.
John Berryhill says
As Andrew points out, there is no difference between a digital “original” and a digital “copy”. Software, such as the code in question here, would not even function if it could not be flawlessly copied for distribution, compilation and execution.
If you want a better “Mona Lisa” analogy… the “same thing” here would be paying to “own” one of countless perfect instances of the Mona Lisa, but with the catch that your copy must be kept in the Louvre – which you don’t own and which charges admission – in order to prove it remains yours. Because any of the countless identical instances of it which exist somewhere else are not the one you purchased.
I’m going to sell you a one-of-a-kind Lamborghini. It is identical to every other Lamborghini, but what makes this one special is that you have to keep it in my garage at all times, so that I can tell everyone its yours.
thelegendaryjp says
Good for the seller.
Jack says
There’s no useful way of exclusivity over the object, such as control or ownership, such as you would have with a domain, land, or painting. Unlike physical art, digital art is all ‘prints’. There is no ‘original’, unless this includes the layered file format used to save out the ‘flattened’ file/image/video, including any project folders containing RAW file assets; even then it’s a stretch…
Contrary to its name non-fungible, it is INFINITELY fungible as anybody can create another chain for NFT, or load it onto another, just as anyone can create another blockchain and *coin. It seems to only be ‘non-fungible’ inside it’s artificially constructed/assigned ‘technically non-fungible’ framework. So technically anything can now mean anything you want it to mean when you invent terms/words and then attempt to abstract away truth and reality. Smoke and mirrors from a psychopaths playbook. Such is the contradictory and predatory way this digital garbage is thrust on the increasingly stupefied and intellectually and emotionally impoverished sucker population.
Like *coin, the value is in the speculation. The logic is in estimating the illogic or predatory way of speculators.
thelegendaryjp says
Careful Jack, too much common sense is dangerous.
The term is “a fool and his money” for a reason.