I am a big believer in the power of stories. In 1993, journalist Julian Dibbell wrote an article for the Village Voice entitled “A Rape in Cyperspace“, in which he described a series of moderating decisions that were taken at an early virtual community called LambdaMOO. The online shenanigans are Read more
Most of the writing about the legal issues surrounding NFTs has been rightly concentrated on two topics, what rights does the buyer acquire when purchasing a token, and the issue of copyright infringement. But I have been thinking for a while that perhaps one of the most interesting legal subjects Read more
Please gather around, and listen to this cautionary tale of schadenfreude and greed. This is not a tale for the faint of heart; it involves a cabal of crypto-enthusiasts working on a decentralised autonomous organisation (DAO), a failed film adaptation by Alejandro Jodorowsky of the classic book Dune , and Read more
Amongst many other things, writer Neal Stephenson is famous for having coined the term “Metaverse” in his 1992 cyberpunk novel “Snow Crash”, but he has also written a lot about virtual worlds in some of his later work, particularly the novel “Reamde“, which is a techno-political thriller which introduces a Read more
2021 has been the year of the NFT here at Llama Towers. It seems like there’s no shortage of stories coming out of the NFT scene, so to avoid having to rename the blog to “NFT Weekly News” I haven’t been reacting to the latest occurrence with the same enthusiasm Read more
Text of my presentation at the IGF panel Videogames and their Uniting Power. Thanks very much to the organisers for the kind invitation to join this panel, it is an honour. I have to start with a disclaimer, I am just an academic who has been writing on the interface Read more
It’s been another interesting day in the wilderness that is NFT-land. While many people (myself included) have spent a good part of the legal commentary on the NFT art market, the most valuable tokens can be found in collectibles, these usually take the shape of a stock character that is Read more
This is the text of my presentation at this year’s Gikii Conference, expanding some of the themes and giving more detail. The slides can be found here. Before I begin, I need to make a quick explanation of the title. The phrase comes from the painting by René Magritte “The Read more
Hi, I am Trovare, your personal AI assistant. Your AI-ssistant if you will. Hahaha. In compliance with the Turing Act 2027, I must inform you that I’m a fully automated sentient entity, if you would rather speak to a human, one will be provided to you, but I must warn Read more
In 2005 artist Matt Furie created four cartoon characters for a cartoon called Boy’s Club: Andy, Brett, Landwolf, and Pepe. You’d be forgiven if you were not familiar with the first three, but if you’ve spent any time online in the last decade you’ll almost certainly have come across the Read more