Rare Book Monthly

Articles - September - 2021 Issue

Is This the Long-Distant Future of Collecting?

 Is this the appearance of tomorrow's collectible books?

Is this the appearance of tomorrow's collectible books?

There was an article in Forbes recently that addresses the issue of changes in patterns of long-term collecting. This is not one of those will people be more interested in fiction or non-fiction, or will they still be interested in James Bond and Harry Potter five or ten years from now. No, this is seriously long term, such that I won't have to worry about it, and probably neither will you unless you are much younger than I. This change won't even begin until sometime after the year 2065 and even then it will take time to gather some steam. Nevertheless, a little blue skying is fascinating once in a while.

 

The title of this article is NFT “Idea Tokens” Are Not Just Here To Stay. They Are The Future Of The Economy, the author Amir Husain, founder and CEO of an artificial intelligence company. That sounds extreme if not totally unbelievable, but hear him out. There will be changes in the next 50 years we can't even imagine today. The shortcoming here may be that he is too hidebound by today's knowledge rather than too far out. NFTs (non-fungible tokens) are those digital signatures that make a digital or virtual “thing” unique. They are a big thing in 2021, but may be long since passé by 2065, the target date.

 

That date was selected based on some predictions that this is the point when earth's human population will peak, to then begin a decline. This seems reasonable as overpopulation in some areas is not sustainable, and as incomes rise, families get smaller. Some industrialized nations no longer produce enough children to maintain their population at current levels.

 

Economic growth over the past few centuries has been based on population growth. What happens when the population starts to shrink, too few people chasing an overabundance of goods and services? Will gold maintain its value when there are fewer people wanting it? Will the value of agricultural land continue to increase when less food is needed while production efficiency continues to rise? Perhaps the answer is to increase per capita consumption, but consumption of what? We can't (or shouldn't) eat more food than we already do. Will we need more cars when there are unmanned aerial vehicles waiting to take us where we want to go? And, if we produce more and more goods, where will we put them all?

 

That leads us to Husain's NFT theory of how people will spend their money. He explains, “One example of a formless, infinitely varied class of goods is virtual, digital artifacts that are represented only as data. These goods can be created in any quantity, solely by converting energy into unique, one-of-a-kind tokens that impart ownership. These tokens can represent ideas, discoveries, art, music, and in fact, entire collections of such goods. They can allow individual, exclusive ownership, easy transferability, efficient storage and demand no maintenance.” He continues, “But why would people want vast quantities of such tokens?” That leads to a quote about books that caught my eye, “Book collectors can never have enough books. They will pay more for first editions and copies signed by the author. Art appreciates.”

 

In this scenario, NFTs are the new books. But that doesn't mean books disappear. There can be NFT books too. It just requires a digital copy of a book rather than a physical one. In other words, people can collect electronic books instead.

 

Does that sound far-fetched? Maybe not. Something else recently caught my eye. It's called Calibre. It is described as “an open source e-book library management application that enables you to manage your e-book collection, convert e-books between different formats, synchronize with popular e-book reader devices, and read your e-books with the included viewer. It acts as an e-library...”

 

You can now keep your e-book collection in an e-library. You can have your reading copies and your collectible token ones (which you can read too without damaging them). You can buy, sell, collect and dispose, just like with physical books. It is book collecting for the digital age, for people who grew up living in a virtual world.

 

Will this come to pass? I don't think so, but not for the reason you might think, that as an older person, this all seems ridiculous to me. Actually, it's quite the opposite. Looking back 50 years ago, all sorts of technological advances have occurred that no one thought of back then. Who imagined the internet? How about cell phones, let alone smart phones? Even personal computers were a stretch then. Social media? Video games let alone online ones? Virtual reality? Augmented reality? Artificial intelligence? The weakness in Husain's argument, in my opinion, is that his future is all based on today's technology. As we know, technology advances, and those advances come faster and furiouser, not slower. The world of 2065 will look so different from today's, and the idea that NFTs will survive, let alone prosper, seems dubious. They are more likely to be the equivalent of eight-track tapes and boomboxes, a fad left in the dust by something better.


Posted On: 2021-09-01 22:49
User Name: artbooks1

Some day Junior, when ahm gone, all these nfts will be yours...or maybe you want the Andy Warhols and your sister can have the nfts?


Rare Book Monthly

  • Bonhams, Apr. 8: First report outside of the colonies of the American Revolution, from American accounts. Printed broadsheet, The London Evening-Post, May 30, 1775. $20,000 - $30,000
    Bonhams, Apr. 8: Joyce, James. The earliest typescript pages from Finnegans Wake ever to appear at auction, annotated by Joyce, 1923. $30,000 - $50,000
    Bonhams, Apr. 8: Joyce's Ulysses, 1923, one of only seven copies known, printed to replace copies destroyed in customs. $10,000 - $15,000
    Bonhams, Apr. 8: ATHANASIUS KIRCHER'S COPY, INSCRIBED. Saggi di naturali esperienze fatte nell' Accademia del Cimento, 1667. $2,000 - $3,000
    Bonhams, Apr. 8: Bernoulli's Ars conjectandi, 1713. "... first significant book on probability theory." $15,000 - $25,000
    Bonhams, Apr. 8: Aristotle's Politica. Oeconomica. 1469. The first printed work on political economy. $80,000 - $120,000
    Bonhams, Apr. 8: John Graunt's Natural and political observations...., 1662. The first printed work of epidemiology and demographics. $20,000 - $30,000
    Bonhams, Apr. 8: William Playfair's Commercial and Political Atlas, 1786. The first work to pictorially represent information in graphics. $15,000 - $25,000
    Bonhams, Apr. 8: Anson's A Voyage Round the World, 1748. THE J.R. ABBEY-LORD WARDINGTON COPY, BOUND BY JOHN BRINDLEY. $8,000 - $12,000
    Bonhams, Apr. 8: La Perouse's Voyage de La Perouse autour du monde..., 1797. LARGE FINE COPY IN ORIGINAL BOARDS. $8,000 - $12,000
    Bonhams, Apr. 8: Francesca Woodman's Some Disordered Interior Geometries, 1981. Untrimmed publisher's proof sheets. $4,000 - $6,000
    Bonhams, Apr. 8: Charles Schulz original 8-panel Peanuts Sunday comic strip, 1992, pen and ink over pencil, featuring Charlie Brown, Snoopy and Lucy as a psychiatrist. $20,000 - $30,000
  • Dominic Winter Auctioneers

    April 9
    Printed Books, English Bibles, Maps & Decorative Prints
    Dominic Winter, Apr. 9: Johnson (C.). A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the most Notorious Pyrates, 1724. £3,000-4,000
    Dominic Winter, Apr. 9: Ordonez de Cevallos (Pedro). Viage del Mundo, 1st edition, Madrid: Luis Sanchez, 1614. £1,000-1,500
    Dominic Winter, Apr. 9: North America. Merian (Matthaus), Virginia..., 1627 or later. £1,500-2,500
    Dominic Winter Auctioneers

    April 9
    Printed Books, English Bibles, Maps & Decorative Prints
    Dominic Winter, Apr. 9: World. Waldseemuller (Martin), Tabula Nova Totius Orbis, Vienne: 1541. £2,000-3,000
    Dominic Winter, Apr. 9: Erasmus (Desiderius). The ... paraphrase of Erasmus... 2 volumes, 1st edition, 1549. £3,000-5,000
    Dominic Winter, Apr. 9: Bible [English]. [The Bible and Holy Scriptures conteyned in the Olde and Newe Testament, 1562]. £3,000-5,000
    Dominic Winter Auctioneers

    April 9
    Printed Books, English Bibles, Maps & Decorative Prints
    Dominic Winter, Apr. 9: Smith (Lucy). Biographical Sketches of Joseph Smith the Prophet, 1st edition, 1853. £1,000-1,500
    Dominic Winter, Apr. 9: Derain (Andre). Pantagruel, signed limited edition, Albert Skira, 1943. £2,000-3,000
    Dominic Winter, Apr. 9: Austen (Jane). Pride and Prejudice, illustrated by Hugh Thomson, Large Paper edition, 1894. £1,500-2,000
    Dominic Winter Auctioneers

    April 9
    Printed Books, English Bibles, Maps & Decorative Prints
    Dominic Winter, Apr. 9: Ellison (Ralph). Invisible Man, 1st edition, New York: Random House, 1952. £200-300
    Dominic Winter, Apr. 9: Taschen Collector's Edition. Annie Leibovitz, limited edition, 2014. £1,000-1,500
  • Sotheby's
    Sell Your Fine Books & Manuscripts
    Sotheby’s: The Shem Tov Bible, 1312 | A Masterpiece from the Golden Age of Spain. Sold: 6,960,000 USD
    Sotheby’s: Ten Commandments Tablet, 300-800 CE | One of humanity's earliest and most enduring moral codes. Sold: 5,040,000 USD
    Sotheby’s: William Blake | Songs of Innocence and of Experience. Sold: 4,320,000 USD
    Sotheby’s: The Declaration of Independence | The Holt printing, the only copy in private hands. Sold: 3,360,000 USD
    Sotheby's
    Sell Your Fine Books & Manuscripts
    Sotheby’s: Thomas Taylor | The original cover art for Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. Sold: 1,920,000 USD
    Sotheby’s: Machiavelli | Il Principe, a previously unrecorded copy of the book where modern political thought began. Sold: 576,000 GBP
    Sotheby’s: Leonardo da Vinci | Trattato della pittura, ca. 1639, a very fine pre-publication manuscript. Sold: 381,000 GBP
    Sotheby’s: Henri Matisse | Jazz, Paris 1947, the complete portfolio. Sold: 312,000 EUR

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