Just when you thought the NFT boom was over, it's not. Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of the World Wide Web, is auctioning off the source code of his invention as a non-corrupt token. [NFTs are a way to guarantee unique ownership of digital items, and in this age of rampant digital content theft, they sound like a useful tool for artists and others, but because they are based on the blockchain technology that underpins cryptocurrencies, they are mostly an environmental nightmare. The NFTs are also a nightmare for the environment. In many cases, NFTs have also been set up for stolen art, defeating the purpose of the tokens in the first place.

Oddly enough, Sir Tim Berners-Lee has a 1990-91 source code, an animated visualization of the code, a letter from Lee about the code, and a "digital poster" of the code he created. [The auction was held at Sotherby's Auction House, which the NFT claims is "an ideal way to package this representation of the source code for the web, and represents a perfect fit of media and content."

You can read portions of the letter for free on Sotherby's site:

"It's great fun to go back and read the code. It's amazing to see how that relatively few lines of code, with the help of some of the greatest collaborators on the planet, stayed on track long enough to become what the web is today." The Web is constantly changing. The Web is constantly changing.

Sotherby's accepts bids in cryptocurrency. The auction house also claims that "the carbon footprint of this NFT is negligible" to offset transaction costs, but this ignores the significant impact of the broader Ethereum blockchain technology that most NFTs are created within. Ethereum is currently dependent on mining, which is environmentally destructive.

The impact of the Ethereum network is expected to be greatly mitigated by the transition to a non-energy intensive foundation of blockchain technology, Proof of Stake, but currently the total mining on the network is comparable to some countries.

According to Sotherby's, Sir Tim seems to be a fan of the concept. He said, "It feels right to digitally sign a completely digital artifact," and that the NFT is "a natural part of being a computer scientist."

Owning the World Wide Web source code with Sir Tim's digital signature does not give you special VIP access to the back rooms of the Internet. It is not copyrighted or patented technology, nor is it important. The code is just a piece of important modern history, and anyone who buys the NFT will probably want to feel like they own that history.

They probably won't, but they will spend a fortune to believe so.