"They should have sent a poet".

This is a famous quote by the character Ellie Arroway in Carl Sagan's book Contact. Her technical knowledge as a scientist paid no justice to what she was seeing when she travelled to another universe as she could not find the words to describe it.

This document will hopefully make the case that Blockchain projects and dApps should consider some early adopter content creators as important members of these projects. Not just any content creator but those that are recognized by the community as active, invested in and helpful in bringing the projects forward.

1. It's not about any specific blockchain or dApp

This argument proposed in this document is not about any specific blockchain or dApp, but it is a much broader scope, understanding that these are changing times in the way we interact and transact on the internet, but most importantly, understanding the shift in mindset required by culture to support these new ideas and technologies.

It is my estimation (not my idea) that this is and has always been best done by ART. "Art is the lie that tells the truth" (quote attributed to many famous artists in history).

A science fiction writer (emphasis on the fiction) will inspire way more people about the future than any technical document. Before there was science there was philosophy and before philosophy there was already art. It's no coincidence as art gets to the deepest of our subconscious.

What I mean is that it's about bringing about culture. So it is not about a particular blockchain, it's about all blockchains. We need Art and Poetry and Music to bring about the future in an inspiring way.

2. Not all content creators are the same.

More of a continuation on the first point. Not all content creators are well versed in tech and culture. Most content creators, at the point in which this document is written, are still very much in Web2, and a big chunk of those will never go out into web3 but will instead wait for the platform in which they are already in to accept crypto payments and will happily accept their fate inside those walled gardens and will never skip a beat when someone mentions decentralization, especially if it's explained to them by technical people. For this you need a special breed of content creators, the early adopters that risked dropping Web2 in order to not just bring about Web3 but also to put it to the test. The ones that know that it is cultural, political and economic as much as it is technological. Those that push through the non user friendly interfaces to make sure that new platforms have users to test their tech with. Napster, Limewire or Kazaa would have not been P2P networks without the users that ventured out there in the undergrounds of culture to bring those into the mainstream. You need those who are daring and willing to disrupt, with art.

3. For Team Human

"The special thing that we, regular biological humans have that the robots don't, is soul". -Douglas Rushkoff

Technocratic systems have always lacked humanity. We need a cultural, philosophical and ethical underpinning to the systems that we build. This is best done by being wrapped in imaginative stories and visual art that represents said stories. This is why Shakespeare's plays are still to this day great representations of human behaviour, more so than technical psychology books. In them, we find the nature of relationships, self deprication, abuse of power, envy, greed, love and much more.

This is why I've titled this document, A cathedral without the art is just a building. We need the storytelling and the art, as human beings, to move us, to hack awe, to compell us. We can't escape the storytelling even if we wanted to as we live inside narratives. These are best constructed by artists that understand culture. It gets to the human level and to the subconscious.

We are moving to a highly technical not too distant future and the fear of many is that it will lack humanity. We need to embed these systems, for lack of a better word, with "Soul".

What I mean is that, us, the HUMANS that are using these new systems should have a decentralized ability to govern the new systems that are being built, if only to put in check the highly technical people that build them to avoid the abuses that rob us from our humanity. i.e Web2 and weaponization of data.

Conclusion:

It is my hope that this non-technical short document can illuminate to blockchain projectas and dApp builders that content creators, especially artists, are not only helpful but necessary in the development and communication of the project and it's goals to the broader population.

So, please fill your projects with art and story.

Thank you for reading

Sincerely,

Eclipsing Binary