Perfect copies once made originals more valuable. Could generated abundance do the same for things made by people?
Early notes only. The interesting version of this question isn’t sentimental. It is economic: provenance and effort as signals that can’t be faked cheaply.
When factories made goods cheap, the handmade thing didn't disappear. It moved upmarket. William Morris and the Arts and Crafts movement made a whole aesthetic out of what machines couldn't …
you can't generate being there
England has required silver to be tested and stamped since 1300. The stamp was tiny and it did one job: it told a stranger the metal was what it claimed to be. Once there is enough cheap imi…
the stamp outlived the smith
In 1935 Walter Benjamin argued that mechanical reproduction strips a work of art of its aura: its presence in one time and place. He was right about the aura and wrong about what would happe…
provenance is a product now
reading pile. growing.
the gaps keep getting shorter…