The Ritual of Buying and Echoes of the Algorithm

Systems of Observation and Observable Systems

As technology evolves, new forms of creating and sharing cultural artefacts surface. Cataloguing these new means of cultural production is not always straightforward because they are decentralised and often ephemeral. In the past, libraries and physical archives functioned as repositories of reliable knowledge. The information there was reviewed, appraised, approved. Depending on its age and condition, it would undergo thorough processes of preservation and conservation. As the digital landscape evolves, new models of preserving content are required, ones that can ensure the maintenance of context and authenticity. Systems which reflect and adapt to the speed and diversity at which culture changes. One experiment in addressing these concerns was the NFT. Although much of the NFT market has already lost its speculative value¹, it offered an early model for thinking about digital archiving and the politics of ownership.

While fiat currency is fungible, (a dollar is the same as any other), NFTs carry distinctive and irreplaceable data, which cannot be interchanged. Amongst this data is verifiable information about the provenance, authorship and ownership of the token. It is written into the blockchain forever, it cannot be tampered with. In this sense, the token archives itself at the moment of creation. Archival theory tells us that effective archiving depends on principles like authenticity, provenance, original order, appraisal, and fixity^{2 3 4}. While blockchain technologies were not created as archives, they incidentally address many of these major concerns, by embedding key metadata in each record. This might include its name, description, attributes, a URI which links back to its associated media. 

These experiments arose because the old systems proved to be inadequate to organise and manage digital content, raising new questions of authorship and ownership: how could one own a digital object? New systems emerged, shuffling and scurrying to keep up. Would it be possible to take what was learnt about digital archiving and ownership, and apply it back to the space of physical matter? Essentially, a dialectical process which would involve learning from the past, negating it, and eventually reincorporating it in new ways. A negotiation between stability and volatility. The digital archive, returning to matter.

• Thesis: Physical archive (known, trusted)
• Antithesis: Digital chaos + crypto speculation (unmoored + novel)
• Synthesis: Re-anchored physical object + digital trust layer (a new stability)

Codex of Consumption

This is the ambition of the Digital Product Passport (DPP)⁵. It open-sources the hidden life of a product, its origin, its means of creation, and its eventual unmaking. Every repair, resale, or transformation becomes a recorded act, an inscription in a public ledger that resists forgetting. Ownership becomes collective memory, and data becomes narrative. 

The final form is yet to be agreed upon, leaving space for intentional design proposals and speculation around architecture and collaboration: how can these regulations make way to meaningful change without becoming burdensome? How much information is too much information in a system that never forgets? Within the context of textiles, the data might include a record of material and composition, the site of manufacture, working conditions, the instructions for repair and recycling, the ghost-trail of previous owners, the imprint of environmental cost.

In its physical form, it might take the shape of QR codes or NFC chips sewn into the garment care label. These are realistically the most cost-effective solutions. Brands could find a way to include it as a visible feature of the garment, creating custom branded patches or hardware. It could also merge into the design of the piece, printed, knit or even woven in using smart thread. The biggest challenge is to balance durability, cost, and comfort. Once these chips are scanned, they would reveal a packet of information pertaining to the garment, with data either managed in centralised databases controlled by brands and retailers, or preserved on a blockchain with no central authority.

Aside from benefits relating to sustainability and circularity⁶, there is potential for this technology to break open new business models, such as that of the trustless resale market. Trustless, not because it is untrustworthy, but because it will no longer hinge on the honesty and reliability of an individual seller. It's like a certificate of authenticity, except digital and immutable. 

While this digital passport holds brands accountable for their supply-chain, it holds consumers accountable for auditing brand’s sustainability claims, to provide proper care and maintenance for the artefact and easily repurpose or dispose of it, if or when the time comes. The consumer thus gains onus and control over their possession, empowered to make a conscious and educated decision about the purchase: is it worth the cost, knowing where it was made, how it was made, and who made it?

Slow, paced reflection as a response to a world that seeks instant gratification in every transaction. 

The Wardens of Provenance

In this setting, the user becomes ritual participant, guardian, surveyor, archivist, co-creator. Collecting becomes a ceremony of protection, where the object demands to be cared for, and let you know exactly how. A ritual of verification, affirming shared cultural values. A collective memory practice, where the object lives on in its own afterlife, and where resales become acts of storytelling, reshaping heritage and lineage.

DPPs become not merely a tool for tracking but a ritual architecture for circularity, encoding care, accountability, and continuity into the fabric of commerce.

In Defence of the blockchain: Tokenised Truths

Choosing the technology for these passports is not a matter of engineering alone, it’s a question of values. The choice isn’t technical, it’s ideological.

Technologies such as traditional databases offer real advantages. They are mature, supported, and offer no lack of skilled developers. They’re cheap and effective because they don’t require consensus rituals like blockchain. Privacy management is simple, because data can easily be hidden behind well-tested permission controls. This is useful in the case of trade secrets, for example. Consortium (permissioned) ledgers, can also manage this privacy better than public blockchains.⁷

But these solutions are black boxes. Data can be changed, deleted, or hidden. They are owned by a central authority or gatekeeper, introducing potential trust issues around how private data would be handled. This creates for a type of asymmetry of visibility, being seen but not seeing. Blockchain data is immutable: once it is written, it stays written and is available for public scrutiny forever. If used correctly, this could promote brand trust and credibility, a type of model that is already being widely adopted by brands that are driven by sustainability. 

This type of technology is shared, and  every network participant can own an entire copy of the ledger. This protects it against any individual point of vulnerability or failure: imagine thousands of invisible scribes, each creating a copy of the same manuscript in real time. No individual authorship, no erasure of what is already there. It is immune to the flames of the library of Alexandria. 

The Glass Panopticon

Transparency is a double-edged sword that can cut both ways. Used wisely, it can balance the asymmetry of visibility. But radical openness requires radical responsibility. 

If surveillance is inevitable, it should at least be decentralised, open, auditable. If panopticons must be constructed, let them be made of glass.