Introducing the New Formal Dialectics NFTBook
A philosophy book, a decentralized application, a focused social media experiment.
Dialectics is the base layer upon which statements about the world play out. It could be said that Dialectics is a set of metaphysical assumptions that undergird the statements we are able to make. It is somewhat fitting, then, that with Formal Dialectics, we have a book that has already had an unusually large and sophisticated conversation around the subject matter. Only ~150 copies ever moved from the Publisher in the five or so years it was available at Cambridge Scholars Publishing, but it was reviewed by a number of Ph.D philosophers who gave it rave reviews, treated it as if it was written by a Ph.D (it was not, my highest degree is MA), and called it names like “impressive” and “ambitious” as an undertaking.
Keep in mind that I never made a dime from Formal Dialectics until it became an NFTBook, supported by Page Open Source Project technologies. I’m the founder of the PageDAO, and it is with great enthusiasm that I make this announcement: the concept of what a book is, is changing! This has happened a number of times in the past, most recently with the advent of the eBook, but (both) printing press(es) and written word are also in this category for scale.
Observe the new NFTBook here:
We are changing what a book is by adding an entirely new, heavily social dimension to it. Previously, there was a book that was written and launched, and the text became ossified in the sense that it was no longer able to change. This sense of static content, that applied to books from the handwriting period to the ebook’s era, entailed a text that was printed and released, and occasionally reprinted — but due to the constraints of technology in those times, secondary literature came and went as the collective consciousness of humanity digested the content and people consumed & discussed it.
The book itself is often the easiest cultural artifact related to the author’s efforts for subsequent generations to exhume, primarily due to the property of provenance. Books are big, and they contain many words, which made them valuable in a most persistent way dating all the way back to the beginning of what we think of as civilization. They are the original form that social media took, and for millennia were the most powerful means by which ideas could spread across the world, reaching new human minds.
But not all media contains this level of value or provenance! In fact, it is a problem dating all the way back to the beginning of the Western academic tradition in Ancient Greece. While we have Plato’s Republic, we do not also possess the responses it drew from its contemporary cohort of scholars. And that can change now, if we so choose — behold, academics, a vehicle suited to sharing not only your own thoughts but also those who come along later and wish to join the conversation.
In the case of Formal Dialectics, users who wish to become involved in the conversation around the work may submit responses to the Serious Philosophy Optimism Collection for inclusion at the end of the Maintext as an ordered component of Appendix A. Social media users may submit their posts and responses to Appendix B if they wish. It is the intention of the author to put substantial effort into the maintenance of the collection, enabling Formal Dialectics to grow as large as its audience wishes it to.
Today onward, holding a Formal Dialectics NFTBook enables the user to not only view the entire Maintext file anytime they like, it also provides the user with access to token-gated content only available to NFTBook holders and a stream of secondary discussion and author essays. Time will tell what the Formal Dialectics NFTBook will ultimately come to contain, but for the first time since the advent of the book, the author now has the ability to create and maintain the work in a fashion that can truly be called dialectical.
Mint your copy today, from my Bonfire homepage:
Originally published at https://mirror.xyz.
