The practical aspect of this research is a new software being specifically developed to release, license, and catalogue digital files. This system, transforming the traditional approach towards metadata, is based on the idea that any file is an independent creation living its own life and experiencing various levels of transformation and progressive generation (of meaning, shape, and entities) in the course of its virtual existence. This way digital resources, interpreted as cultural units, are considered the main actors of the web.

Virtual Entity constructs in parallel a theoretical mythical world and its functional technical counterpart; it is, in this sense, a physical and metaphysical metadata. Its (viral) diffusion may generate a decentralized archive characterized by spontaneous and uncontrollable growth. Read about concept and development, and see the project documentation.

Digital entities are like nature, they do not belong to anyone. The net is a morphing distributed body mirroring current human culture. Any digital immaterial creation can be instantiated in infinite number of copies identical to the original native file. Culture does not have owners.

Ongoing questions:

• what is a digital entity?
• what are the characteristics of a minimal unit to be considered a digital resource?
• can the concept of ‘non-property’ be a positive alternative to the stigmatized idea of ‘Piracy’?
• meta-data: what words are really descriptive?
• what is the best balance in a language that is machine and human understandable?
• tagging vs metadata: what system can give the most interesting results?
• singularity and doubt: what is virtual?
• can we start doubting of the very chair we are sitting on?

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