4author = "Curtis Yarvin"
5description = "A thought-experiment to explain the Urbit user experience."
6aliases = ["/posts/essays/magic"]
10
12It's easy to get too obsessed with Urbit's alien technology. We
13didn't build Urbit for its tech. We built it for people to use.
15It's also hard to understand the power of Urbit, because it's
16still quite immature. Unless you understand it already, it's
17just a weird OS that doesn't work all that well.
19And this OS is supposedly designed as a new kind of product: a
20personal server. What is a personal server? If you had one,
21you'd know. Since you don't, you don't. So both your problem
22and our solution are totally unclear.
24One way to understand Urbit is to forget the technology totally.
25Instead, let's build the same product out of magic. Technology
26is hard and imperfect and slow. Magic is easy and perfect and
27fast. Why not use it? At least for a demo?
29## Magic step one: total integration.
31Make a list of all the cloud apps which have your personal data.
32OK, just imagine making a list. OK, use magic.
34By magic, we make some giant company buy all these apps. It
35could be any of them, but let's say it's Facebook. Facebook buys
36_all the apps_. As of now, _all your cloud computing happens in
37your Facebook profile_.
39Your Facebook is now your Dropbox and your Evernote and your
40Wordpress and your Gmail. And it's not just Web apps; all your
41servers move to Facebook. Your Nest talks to a Facebook server.
42Your iPhone talks to Facebook instead of iCloud. Your Fitbit
43records your heart rate in a Facebook log. Your Facebook
44manages your finances and pays your bills. Got bitcoin?
45Facebook is your wallet. Shop online? Check out the Facebook
46Store -- it sells everything!
48In short, you can just lock your browser to `facebook.com`. The
49Web is dead. Or more precisely, it's an obsolete protocol which
50you use to log in to Facebook.
52Does this sound creepy? Sure. It's incredibly creepy. But look
53on the bright side: it's also incredibly convenient. (And
54incredibly secure, at least with a 2-factor key.)
56For the first time ever, _all your data is in one place_. For
57example, the engineers at Facebook, who are awesome, would never
58leave Dropbox, Instagram and iCloud as three separate things.
59You don't need an "integration" between them. Your profile is
60one thing: you. Your entire digital life.
62(In fact, if you're a geek and have Unix boxes, your Facebook is
63magically integrated with Unix. You can just open your laptop
64and type `ls /photos/2016/May/` -- as if your digital life was a
65chip in a box in your backpack, not redundant servers in multiple
68Imagine we all lived in hotels, all the time, even in just one
69city. Imagine you don't even have one room with a long-term
70lease. You sleep in one pod Mondays, another on Tuesdays...
71then, someone offers you a home. Your own house. With your own
72furniture, your own books in your own bookcases...
74## Magic step two: free your data.
76The good news is, you get your own house. The bad news is, it's
79Having your whole life owned by Facebook is still creepy. Or so
80most people would think. It's not actually clear that it's more
81creepy to be owned by one corporation, than nine corporations.
82But it _feels_ creepier.
84By magic, Facebook cares. So it decides to free you. Actually,
85Facebook's business is owning you. So freedom will destroy its
86business. But magically, Facebook doesn't mind.
88Right now, the software behind your Facebook experience is a
89million lines of Facebook goo. It solves your problems and shows
90your ads and does whatever the heck it wants with your data.
91(Not that it's "your" data. It's Facebook's data, about you.)
93Without changing the functionality of your Facebook experience,
94Facebook replaces every component of this goo with an "agent."
95(You have about as many agents as you used to have apps.) If you
96don't care about being free, you won't notice the change. If you
97do care, everything changes.
99One, you don't have to run Facebook's agents. You can replace
100them with anyone else's software, free or paid. Agents upgrade
101themselves automatically, but you are never locked in; you can
102always switch agents and/or vendors without damaging your data.
104Don't like your email UI? Change it. Don't like to see ads?
105You no longer see any ads -- why would someone use an agent that
106showed them ads? Ick. Unless it's something ridiculously
107specialized, an agent is either free software or costs $3.99.
109Two, agents _act as you_. Facebook is no longer the Panopticon.
110It is not a giant mainframe where all the code can access all the
111data. An agent can use as much of your own data as you give it;
112it cannot use anyone else's data. At least not without asking.
114When anyone can write an agent, only code can be law. Privacy is
115no longer enforced by the informal decisions of Facebook product
116managers. It must be enforced by formal security policies.
118This might constrict the services Facebook can offer, but only a
119little. Since privacy is a human universal, apps that don't
120respect it (for instance, image face tagging) feel weird. A
121service like this can't be broken up into personal agents; it
122still requires a Big Data mainframe somewhere. But it's okay;
123the agents can still talk to it.
125For the most part, Big Data (everyone's) has become little data
126(yours). You no longer have a Facebook profile -- a fancy UI
127backed by a million lines of Facebook goo on one big mainframe.
128Now what you have is a Facebook _server_: a real computer. Or at
129least, a virtual computer (which is much more reliable than any
130one physical computer).
132Is this computer hard to manage? You have the same basic job as
133someone who owns an iPhone: deciding what software to run. If
134you skip this job, your iPhone or your Facebook is still pretty
135useful. You also need to decide what data to keep. An iPhone
136has finite, free storage; the cloud has infinite, non-free
137storage. You still want a warning when your server gets fat.
138But at least it keeps working.
140## Magic step three: free your server.
142This agent-oriented Facebook can't show you ads. But this is not
143actually a huge business problem. Since Facebook owns everyone's
144life, it has the mother of all monopoly lockins. It can just
145bill you $9.99 a month for running your Facebook server. This is
146a great deal, for you and for Facebook.
148But you're still a slave, Neo. A Facebook server still isn't a
149personal server. Monopolies suck.
151Magic works, so Facebook feels guilty. It goes all the way
152toward freeing you, and ruins its own business.
154Now, your server is just a big file whose format is precisely
155defined. You can move it to any hosting service, or even run it
156on a home PC. Since hosting is now a commodity, it costs almost
157nothing and has zero profit margin. It may even come bundled
158with your Internet service.
160Every data center is owned by the local government. If you have
161data to hide from the authorities, compute at home. Most people
162don't have anything to hide and should run in the cloud, because
163the cloud works better. But using the _same platform_ as those
164who do have something to hide creates "herd immunity". You don't
165have to choose between a secure platform with no network effect,
166and a non-secure platform that everyone else uses.
168## Magic step four: free your name.
170Freeing your server also means freeing your identity. It's no
171longer true that Facebook decides who you are. Facebook just
172wrote the algorithm. Your server contains cryptographic secrets
173that control your identity. If your identity was a bitcoin, your
174server would be a giant bitcoin wallet.
176The bad news: lose the file, lose the identity. The good news:
177your server is genuinely personal now. It's yours in every way.
178It's so personal that if you destroy it, it's gone.
180Facebook doesn't even keep its power to create new servers. The
181"real name" policy has done great things to control spam, because
182spam always depends on disposable accounts. But it implies a
185Instead, Facebook borrows an idea from bitcoin and just limits
186the number of identities. If you need one, you have to buy one.
187They don't cost that much; just enough to deter spammers.
189(Is your real name still linked to your identity? Maybe, maybe
190not. There's a role for name validation, but not everyone needs
191to have a real name, and not everyone else needs to know it. A
192dissident, or anyone who wants to speak out and let the words
193speak for themselves, might want a second anonymous identity.
194But sock puppets remain evil -- two names for the same person
195should not interact in the same place.)
197## Magic step five: call it Urbit.
199And, with magic, we've succeeded in turning Facebook into Urbit.
200Technically, Urbit is pretty close to magic, but there is no way
201it's going to happen this way. See the [roadmap](../roadmap) for how it
keysesc to close
- j k
- move down, up
- enter
- open
- esc
- back, or up a level
- 1 2 3 4
- readme, files, commits, refs
- /
- filter
- y
- copy the clone command
- c
- compare the chosen commit with another (or shift-click both)
- ?
- show or hide this list