6image: http://urbit.s3.amazonaws.com/16-3-10/blog-8.jpg
7preview: A thought-experiment for understanding what the world with Urbit could look like.
17It's easy to get too obsessed with Urbit's alien technology. We
18didn't build Urbit for its tech. We built it for people to use.
20It's also hard to understand the power of Urbit, because it's
21still quite immature. Unless you understand it already, it's
22just a weird OS that doesn't work all that well.
24And this OS is supposedly designed as a new kind of product: a
25personal server. What is a personal server? If you had one,
26you'd know. Since you don't, you don't. So both your problem
27and our solution are totally unclear.
29One way to understand Urbit is to forget the technology totally.
30Instead, let's build the same product out of magic. Technology
31is hard and imperfect and slow. Magic is easy and perfect and
32fast. Why not use it? At least for a demo?
34## Magic step one: total integration.
36Make a list of all the cloud apps which have your personal data.
37OK, just imagine making a list. OK, use magic.
39By magic, we make some giant company buy all these apps. It
40could be any of them, but let's say it's Facebook. Facebook buys
41*all the apps*. As of now, *all your cloud computing happens in
42your Facebook profile*.
44Your Facebook is now your Dropbox and your Evernote and your
45Wordpress and your Gmail. And it's not just Web apps; all your
46servers move to Facebook. Your Nest talks to a Facebook server.
47Your iPhone talks to Facebook instead of iCloud. Your Fitbit
48records your heart rate in a Facebook log. Your Facebook
49manages your finances and pays your bills. Got bitcoin?
50Facebook is your wallet. Shop online? Check out the Facebook
51Store -- it sells everything!
53In short, you can just lock your browser to `facebook.com`. The
54Web is dead. Or more precisely, it's an obsolete protocol which
55you use to log in to Facebook.
57Does this sound creepy? Sure. It's incredibly creepy. But look
58on the bright side: it's also incredibly convenient. (And
59incredibly secure, at least with a 2-factor key.)
61For the first time ever, *all your data is in one place*. For
62example, the engineers at Facebook, who are awesome, would never
63leave Dropbox, Instagram and iCloud as three separate things.
64You don't need an "integration" between them. Your profile is
65one thing: you. Your entire digital life.
67(In fact, if you're a geek and have Unix boxes, your Facebook is
68magically integrated with Unix. You can just open your laptop
69and type `ls /photos/2016/May/` -- as if your digital life was a
70chip in a box in your backpack, not redundant servers in multiple
73Imagine we all lived in hotels, all the time, even in just one
74city. Imagine you don't even have one room with a long-term
75lease. You sleep in one pod Mondays, another on Tuesdays...
76then, someone offers you a home. Your own house. With your own
77furniture, your own books in your own bookcases...
79## Magic step two: free your data.
81The good news is, you get your own house. The bad news is, it's
84Having your whole life owned by Facebook is still creepy. Or so
85most people would think. It's not actually clear that it's more
86creepy to be owned by one corporation, than nine corporations.
87But it *feels* creepier.
89By magic, Facebook cares. So it decides to free you. Actually,
90Facebook's business is owning you. So freedom will destroy its
91business. But magically, Facebook doesn't mind.
93Right now, the software behind your Facebook experience is a
94million lines of Facebook goo. It solves your problems and shows
95your ads and does whatever the heck it wants with your data.
96(Not that it's "your" data. It's Facebook's data, about you.)
98Without changing the functionality of your Facebook experience,
99Facebook replaces every component of this goo with an "agent."
100(You have about as many agents as you used to have apps.) If you
101don't care about being free, you won't notice the change. If you
102do care, everything changes.
104One, you don't have to run Facebook's agents. You can replace
105them with anyone else's software, free or paid. Agents upgrade
106themselves automatically, but you are never locked in; you can
107always switch agents and/or vendors without damaging your data.
109Don't like your email UI? Change it. Don't like to see ads?
110You no longer see any ads -- why would someone use an agent that
111showed them ads? Ick. Unless it's something ridiculously
112specialized, an agent is either free software or costs $3.99.
114Two, agents *act as you*. Facebook is no longer the Panopticon.
115It is not a giant mainframe where all the code can access all the
116data. An agent can use as much of your own data as you give it;
117it cannot use anyone else's data. At least not without asking.
119When anyone can write an agent, only code can be law. Privacy is
120no longer enforced by the informal decisions of Facebook product
121managers. It must be enforced by formal security policies.
123This might constrict the services Facebook can offer, but only a
124little. Since privacy is a human universal, apps that don't
125respect it (for instance, image face tagging) feel weird. A
126service like this can't be broken up into personal agents; it
127still requires a Big Data mainframe somewhere. But it's okay;
128the agents can still talk to it.
130For the most part, Big Data (everyone's) has become little data
131(yours). You no longer have a Facebook profile -- a fancy UI
132backed by a million lines of Facebook goo on one big mainframe.
133Now what you have is a Facebook *server*: a real computer. Or at
134least, a virtual computer (which is much more reliable than any
135one physical computer).
137Is this computer hard to manage? You have the same basic job as
138someone who owns an iPhone: deciding what software to run. If
139you skip this job, your iPhone or your Facebook is still pretty
140useful. You also need to decide what data to keep. An iPhone
141has finite, free storage; the cloud has infinite, non-free
142storage. You still want a warning when your server gets fat.
143But at least it keeps working.
145## Magic step three: free your server.
147This agent-oriented Facebook can't show you ads. But this is not
148actually a huge business problem. Since Facebook owns everyone's
149life, it has the mother of all monopoly lockins. It can just
150bill you $9.99 a month for running your Facebook server. This is
151a great deal, for you and for Facebook.
153But you're still a slave, Neo. A Facebook server still isn't a
154personal server. Monopolies suck.
156Magic works, so Facebook feels guilty. It goes all the way
157toward freeing you, and ruins its own business.
159Now, your server is just a big file whose format is precisely
160defined. You can move it to any hosting service, or even run it
161on a home PC. Since hosting is now a commodity, it costs almost
162nothing and has zero profit margin. It may even come bundled
163with your Internet service.
165Every data center is owned by the local government. If you have
166data to hide from the authorities, compute at home. Most people
167don't have anything to hide and should run in the cloud, because
168the cloud works better. But using the *same platform* as those
169who do have something to hide creates "herd immunity". You don't
170have to choose between a secure platform with no network effect,
171and a non-secure platform that everyone else uses.
173## Magic step four: free your name.
175Freeing your server also means freeing your identity. It's no
176longer true that Facebook decides who you are. Facebook just
177wrote the algorithm. Your server contains cryptographic secrets
178that control your identity. If your identity was a bitcoin, your
179server would be a giant bitcoin wallet.
181The bad news: lose the file, lose the identity. The good news:
182your server is genuinely personal now. It's yours in every way.
183It's so personal that if you destroy it, it's gone.
185Facebook doesn't even keep its power to create new servers. The
186"real name" policy has done great things to control spam, because
187spam always depends on disposable accounts. But it implies a
190Instead, Facebook borrows an idea from bitcoin and just limits
191the number of identities. If you need one, you have to buy one.
192They don't cost that much; just enough to deter spammers.
194(Is your real name still linked to your identity? Maybe, maybe
195not. There's a role for name validation, but not everyone needs
196to have a real name, and not everyone else needs to know it. A
197dissident, or anyone who wants to speak out and let the words
198speak for themselves, might want a second anonymous identity.
199But sock puppets remain evil -- two names for the same person
200should not interact in the same place.)
202## Magic step five: call it Urbit.
204And, with magic, we've succeeded in turning Facebook into Urbit.
205Technically, Urbit is pretty close to magic, but there is no way
206it's going to happen this way. See the [roadmap] for how it
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