6image: http://media.urbit.org/site/blog-8.jpg
7preview: A thought-experiment to explain the Urbit user experience.
18It's easy to get too obsessed with Urbit's alien technology. We
19didn't build Urbit for its tech. We built it for people to use.
21It's also hard to understand the power of Urbit, because it's
22still quite immature. Unless you understand it already, it's
23just a weird OS that doesn't work all that well.
25And this OS is supposedly designed as a new kind of product: a
26personal server. What is a personal server? If you had one,
27you'd know. Since you don't, you don't. So both your problem
28and our solution are totally unclear.
30One way to understand Urbit is to forget the technology totally.
31Instead, let's build the same product out of magic. Technology
32is hard and imperfect and slow. Magic is easy and perfect and
33fast. Why not use it? At least for a demo?
35## Magic step one: total integration.
37Make a list of all the cloud apps which have your personal data.
38OK, just imagine making a list. OK, use magic.
40By magic, we make some giant company buy all these apps. It
41could be any of them, but let's say it's Facebook. Facebook buys
42*all the apps*. As of now, *all your cloud computing happens in
43your Facebook profile*.
45Your Facebook is now your Dropbox and your Evernote and your
46Wordpress and your Gmail. And it's not just Web apps; all your
47servers move to Facebook. Your Nest talks to a Facebook server.
48Your iPhone talks to Facebook instead of iCloud. Your Fitbit
49records your heart rate in a Facebook log. Your Facebook
50manages your finances and pays your bills. Got bitcoin?
51Facebook is your wallet. Shop online? Check out the Facebook
52Store -- it sells everything!
54In short, you can just lock your browser to `facebook.com`. The
55Web is dead. Or more precisely, it's an obsolete protocol which
56you use to log in to Facebook.
58Does this sound creepy? Sure. It's incredibly creepy. But look
59on the bright side: it's also incredibly convenient. (And
60incredibly secure, at least with a 2-factor key.)
62For the first time ever, *all your data is in one place*. For
63example, the engineers at Facebook, who are awesome, would never
64leave Dropbox, Instagram and iCloud as three separate things.
65You don't need an "integration" between them. Your profile is
66one thing: you. Your entire digital life.
68(In fact, if you're a geek and have Unix boxes, your Facebook is
69magically integrated with Unix. You can just open your laptop
70and type `ls /photos/2016/May/` -- as if your digital life was a
71chip in a box in your backpack, not redundant servers in multiple
74Imagine we all lived in hotels, all the time, even in just one
75city. Imagine you don't even have one room with a long-term
76lease. You sleep in one pod Mondays, another on Tuesdays...
77then, someone offers you a home. Your own house. With your own
78furniture, your own books in your own bookcases...
80## Magic step two: free your data.
82The good news is, you get your own house. The bad news is, it's
85Having your whole life owned by Facebook is still creepy. Or so
86most people would think. It's not actually clear that it's more
87creepy to be owned by one corporation, than nine corporations.
88But it *feels* creepier.
90By magic, Facebook cares. So it decides to free you. Actually,
91Facebook's business is owning you. So freedom will destroy its
92business. But magically, Facebook doesn't mind.
94Right now, the software behind your Facebook experience is a
95million lines of Facebook goo. It solves your problems and shows
96your ads and does whatever the heck it wants with your data.
97(Not that it's "your" data. It's Facebook's data, about you.)
99Without changing the functionality of your Facebook experience,
100Facebook replaces every component of this goo with an "agent."
101(You have about as many agents as you used to have apps.) If you
102don't care about being free, you won't notice the change. If you
103do care, everything changes.
105One, you don't have to run Facebook's agents. You can replace
106them with anyone else's software, free or paid. Agents upgrade
107themselves automatically, but you are never locked in; you can
108always switch agents and/or vendors without damaging your data.
110Don't like your email UI? Change it. Don't like to see ads?
111You no longer see any ads -- why would someone use an agent that
112showed them ads? Ick. Unless it's something ridiculously
113specialized, an agent is either free software or costs $3.99.
115Two, agents *act as you*. Facebook is no longer the Panopticon.
116It is not a giant mainframe where all the code can access all the
117data. An agent can use as much of your own data as you give it;
118it cannot use anyone else's data. At least not without asking.
120When anyone can write an agent, only code can be law. Privacy is
121no longer enforced by the informal decisions of Facebook product
122managers. It must be enforced by formal security policies.
124This might constrict the services Facebook can offer, but only a
125little. Since privacy is a human universal, apps that don't
126respect it (for instance, image face tagging) feel weird. A
127service like this can't be broken up into personal agents; it
128still requires a Big Data mainframe somewhere. But it's okay;
129the agents can still talk to it.
131For the most part, Big Data (everyone's) has become little data
132(yours). You no longer have a Facebook profile -- a fancy UI
133backed by a million lines of Facebook goo on one big mainframe.
134Now what you have is a Facebook *server*: a real computer. Or at
135least, a virtual computer (which is much more reliable than any
136one physical computer).
138Is this computer hard to manage? You have the same basic job as
139someone who owns an iPhone: deciding what software to run. If
140you skip this job, your iPhone or your Facebook is still pretty
141useful. You also need to decide what data to keep. An iPhone
142has finite, free storage; the cloud has infinite, non-free
143storage. You still want a warning when your server gets fat.
144But at least it keeps working.
146## Magic step three: free your server.
148This agent-oriented Facebook can't show you ads. But this is not
149actually a huge business problem. Since Facebook owns everyone's
150life, it has the mother of all monopoly lockins. It can just
151bill you $9.99 a month for running your Facebook server. This is
152a great deal, for you and for Facebook.
154But you're still a slave, Neo. A Facebook server still isn't a
155personal server. Monopolies suck.
157Magic works, so Facebook feels guilty. It goes all the way
158toward freeing you, and ruins its own business.
160Now, your server is just a big file whose format is precisely
161defined. You can move it to any hosting service, or even run it
162on a home PC. Since hosting is now a commodity, it costs almost
163nothing and has zero profit margin. It may even come bundled
164with your Internet service.
166Every data center is owned by the local government. If you have
167data to hide from the authorities, compute at home. Most people
168don't have anything to hide and should run in the cloud, because
169the cloud works better. But using the *same platform* as those
170who do have something to hide creates "herd immunity". You don't
171have to choose between a secure platform with no network effect,
172and a non-secure platform that everyone else uses.
174## Magic step four: free your name.
176Freeing your server also means freeing your identity. It's no
177longer true that Facebook decides who you are. Facebook just
178wrote the algorithm. Your server contains cryptographic secrets
179that control your identity. If your identity was a bitcoin, your
180server would be a giant bitcoin wallet.
182The bad news: lose the file, lose the identity. The good news:
183your server is genuinely personal now. It's yours in every way.
184It's so personal that if you destroy it, it's gone.
186Facebook doesn't even keep its power to create new servers. The
187"real name" policy has done great things to control spam, because
188spam always depends on disposable accounts. But it implies a
191Instead, Facebook borrows an idea from bitcoin and just limits
192the number of identities. If you need one, you have to buy one.
193They don't cost that much; just enough to deter spammers.
195(Is your real name still linked to your identity? Maybe, maybe
196not. There's a role for name validation, but not everyone needs
197to have a real name, and not everyone else needs to know it. A
198dissident, or anyone who wants to speak out and let the words
199speak for themselves, might want a second anonymous identity.
200But sock puppets remain evil -- two names for the same person
201should not interact in the same place.)
203## Magic step five: call it Urbit.
205And, with magic, we've succeeded in turning Facebook into Urbit.
206Technically, Urbit is pretty close to magic, but there is no way
207it's going to happen this way. See the [roadmap](../roadmap) for how it
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