Margaret Atwood will hold an online seminar for those who wish, where with each participant she will create stories in the utopia genre, as well as NFT. The seminar will be held at the Disco site. The writer has become the personification of the story of a utopian world in modern literature. She is best known for her work The Handmaid’s Tale, but now the Canadian writer and poet plans to explore the potential of utopia in a new online class and bring it to the NFT format.
Recently, Atwood and online learning platform Disco announced plans to include NFTs in Practical Utopias: Exploring the Possible, an online course that the writer will be teaching from September . Participants in the eight-week live online course will collaboratively imagine potential utopian societies, including what they might look like. These joint discoveries will be turned into illustrations and NFTs on the Tezos blockchain and then distributed to students.
What’s more, an anthology of stories created by the students as well as the writer herself will be sold to NFT later this year . According to representatives of the Disco site, the proceeds will be used for “projects aimed at building a better future.”
“Think of Practical Utopias as a sort of adult sandbox building imaginary communities with real solar cookers. Our utopias must be accessible, attractive and sustainable. So of course the NFT component of this project had to match that too. That’s why we chose Tezos,” Atwood said in an interview.
Tezos is a greener blockchain network than Ethereum and Bitcoin. Video game developer Ubisoft, Manchester United FC, clothing retailer The Gap, and Formula One teams McLaren and Red Bull Racing are also among the brands using Tezos for NFT and Web3 projects.
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The writer first talked about the Tezos blockchain in February of this year on The Tim Ferriss Show podcast, mentioning that a Tezos NFT mint “uses as much power as a tweet.”
In turn, the platform with which the writer will cooperate appeared relatively recently. Disco has become a must-have product during the pandemic , said company co-founder and CEO Candice Factor. Its interface allows creators to deliver classes using live video, chat, asynchronous elements, and more. Upcoming classes with Margaret Atwood will be delivered through Disco Studios, which works directly with course creators.
“When I told Atwood about Disco and asked if she would like to collaborate, she said, ‘Yes, but I definitely won’t be teaching a creative writing course.’” Factor shared.
Instead, Practical Utopias goes beyond the author’s familiar theme, providing an interactive experience that allows students to discuss and collaborate as they try to solve current and future societal problems. Candice Factor also added that the writer wants to leave a legacy of practical solutions to some of today’s toughest problems.
The 200 students who sign up for the course will be divided into teams of eight each to create their own vision of a potential utopia. In addition, each student will receive an NFT they helped create. Factor said NFTs will offer ongoing benefits for owners, including access to future events and experiences.. In addition, the platform plans to further develop this concept, where students will receive NFTs for their creative work. But this is only a small part of the platform’s plan in its advancement in the Web3 and blockchain space. The platform also runs Realm Academy, an NFT and cryptocurrency education program created by Everyrealm, a well-known metaverse investor. Classes are actually held within the online metaverse of the game Somnium Space, which runs on Ethereum and Solana.
“When it comes to online learning in the metaverse, we seem to be in the era of flip phones, that is, at the initial stage. This is an incredible moment where you can do experiential learning at the scale of a virtual environment,” Factor concluded.
