My-Chance Updates
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The story behind My-Chance’s first Global Prize Bond NFT collection
Tasked with creating artwork for the first collection of Prize Bond NFTs, a question that sprang to mind was, ‘How did we get here?’ With no catalyst or singular event evident, yet many connections to the technological realm, it was fitting to tell the story of technological progress without viewing it through a reductionist lens. We live in a time where mainstream narratives often attribute progress to individual characters or events. To tell the story of how My-Chance came into being, one could focus on one or two singular events, but this would be to cry ignorance of the bigger picture.
Humanity’s technological prowess was not achieved by CEOs who perpetuate their cult of personality. It was not achieved by any singular individual or event. Progress comes through collective actions. Through chains of events, which span centuries, we have developed our modern world. If one were to visually model the technological revolution of the past two hundred years, to identify the process in its entirety, while some singular event may have more offshoots than others, the visual would be the growth of a network of interconnected thoughts and actions.
The parts of the network that may seem important, that may seem critical in certain narratives, may have contributed very little to the strength and development of the overall network. Events that have contributed to the strength and development of the network may be those which have been overlooked. One example of this is the role of women in the computer revolution.
From before the Second World War through to the mid-1960s, a time when the network from which today’s digital revolution grew beyond academic research, women were the largest trained technical workforce in the computing industry. Predating this, the term computer was often associated with the women who undertook mathematical exercises by hand and drove the fields of engineering.
Women operated the first electromechanical computers that cracked codes and made ballistic calculations during the second world war. In its wake, the emerging computing centres that gathered data for governments and powered industry had female workforces. The roles were viewed as unskilled despite being critical and were devalued as being similar to the running of an automated process.
When it became apparent that computers were to play a powerful role in our societies and the question of who would control this power was asked things changed. As the shift occurred from an industry with mediocre prospects to that with status, upward mobility and executive-level positions, the industry’s demographics also shifted. The canon of the digital revolution of later decades was that of the association of male nerd/genius and computing.
The canon began also to focus increasingly on those who marketed and sold computer hard and software rather than on those who created the underlying product. While the scientists and engineers worked diligently in the background, building upon the work of their peers, those who could be viewed as middlemen positioned themselves as a Technocratic Elite. We will never know what social, political and economic factors have cost us in terms of progress. What is clear is that an underrepresentation, in the various fields related to computer science, of the diverse constituents of society as a product of a total technological meritocracy is fiction.
Rather than attempt to establish the facts of how our current world came to be, the art of the first collection of Prize Bond NFTs seeks to recognise figures who played an important part in a network of events. Those whose accomplishments allowed others to follow suit and achieve goals of their own. Those who rather than accept conventional expectations pushed the boundaries forward. Those who are recognisable as having contributed to where we are now, and where we will be in the future.
The whole is greater than the sum of the parts. In instances where the subject of a composition that accompanies a Prize Bond is an individual it comes from recognising individual parts of the framework. The intention not to idolise, but rather to inspire. It is not to emphasise the individual events but rather to show that the events are linked and that today’s events are connected to the past. It’s not about focusing on individual exceptionalism but rather on the exceptionalism of collective human endeavour.
The most important parts of the network of progress, and often overlooked, are the everyday people who participate in this network. Technology would not have progressed as it has were it not for its adoption. While magnates of industry may feel like they are irreplaceable, without you and the everyday people who constitute the whole of the network, they are nothing. Without a network of countless individuals participating in change, change does not happen.
We are faced with many challenges as individuals and as a global community. By looking at our past we can see that challenges can be overcome. That we are better positioned to tackle challenges than those who came before us, as they overcame the challenges they faced.
We live in an age where technology has given us abilities to learn, communicate and create, which our ancestors would have considered to be miraculous. We can participate in global networks from the comfort of our homes. We can continue in the spirit of progress carried by our forebears and play a part in making the world a better place for those who follow. We are part of an ever changing network and we can be active in shaping its development.
