4author = "Curtis Yarvin"
5description = "A thought-experiment to explain the Urbit user experience."
9
11It's easy to get too obsessed with Urbit's alien technology. We
12didn't build Urbit for its tech. We built it for people to use.
14It's also hard to understand the power of Urbit, because it's
15still quite immature. Unless you understand it already, it's
16just a weird OS that doesn't work all that well.
18And this OS is supposedly designed as a new kind of product: a
19personal server. What is a personal server? If you had one,
20you'd know. Since you don't, you don't. So both your problem
21and our solution are totally unclear.
23One way to understand Urbit is to forget the technology totally.
24Instead, let's build the same product out of magic. Technology
25is hard and imperfect and slow. Magic is easy and perfect and
26fast. Why not use it? At least for a demo?
28## Magic step one: total integration.
30Make a list of all the cloud apps which have your personal data.
31OK, just imagine making a list. OK, use magic.
33By magic, we make some giant company buy all these apps. It
34could be any of them, but let's say it's Facebook. Facebook buys
35_all the apps_. As of now, _all your cloud computing happens in
36your Facebook profile_.
38Your Facebook is now your Dropbox and your Evernote and your
39Wordpress and your Gmail. And it's not just Web apps; all your
40servers move to Facebook. Your Nest talks to a Facebook server.
41Your iPhone talks to Facebook instead of iCloud. Your Fitbit
42records your heart rate in a Facebook log. Your Facebook
43manages your finances and pays your bills. Got bitcoin?
44Facebook is your wallet. Shop online? Check out the Facebook
45Store -- it sells everything!
47In short, you can just lock your browser to `facebook.com`. The
48Web is dead. Or more precisely, it's an obsolete protocol which
49you use to log in to Facebook.
51Does this sound creepy? Sure. It's incredibly creepy. But look
52on the bright side: it's also incredibly convenient. (And
53incredibly secure, at least with a 2-factor key.)
55For the first time ever, _all your data is in one place_. For
56example, the engineers at Facebook, who are awesome, would never
57leave Dropbox, Instagram and iCloud as three separate things.
58You don't need an "integration" between them. Your profile is
59one thing: you. Your entire digital life.
61(In fact, if you're a geek and have Unix boxes, your Facebook is
62magically integrated with Unix. You can just open your laptop
63and type `ls /photos/2016/May/` -- as if your digital life was a
64chip in a box in your backpack, not redundant servers in multiple
67Imagine we all lived in hotels, all the time, even in just one
68city. Imagine you don't even have one room with a long-term
69lease. You sleep in one pod Mondays, another on Tuesdays...
70then, someone offers you a home. Your own house. With your own
71furniture, your own books in your own bookcases...
73## Magic step two: free your data.
75The good news is, you get your own house. The bad news is, it's
78Having your whole life owned by Facebook is still creepy. Or so
79most people would think. It's not actually clear that it's more
80creepy to be owned by one corporation, than nine corporations.
81But it _feels_ creepier.
83By magic, Facebook cares. So it decides to free you. Actually,
84Facebook's business is owning you. So freedom will destroy its
85business. But magically, Facebook doesn't mind.
87Right now, the software behind your Facebook experience is a
88million lines of Facebook goo. It solves your problems and shows
89your ads and does whatever the heck it wants with your data.
90(Not that it's "your" data. It's Facebook's data, about you.)
92Without changing the functionality of your Facebook experience,
93Facebook replaces every component of this goo with an "agent."
94(You have about as many agents as you used to have apps.) If you
95don't care about being free, you won't notice the change. If you
96do care, everything changes.
98One, you don't have to run Facebook's agents. You can replace
99them with anyone else's software, free or paid. Agents upgrade
100themselves automatically, but you are never locked in; you can
101always switch agents and/or vendors without damaging your data.
103Don't like your email UI? Change it. Don't like to see ads?
104You no longer see any ads -- why would someone use an agent that
105showed them ads? Ick. Unless it's something ridiculously
106specialized, an agent is either free software or costs $3.99.
108Two, agents _act as you_. Facebook is no longer the Panopticon.
109It is not a giant mainframe where all the code can access all the
110data. An agent can use as much of your own data as you give it;
111it cannot use anyone else's data. At least not without asking.
113When anyone can write an agent, only code can be law. Privacy is
114no longer enforced by the informal decisions of Facebook product
115managers. It must be enforced by formal security policies.
117This might constrict the services Facebook can offer, but only a
118little. Since privacy is a human universal, apps that don't
119respect it (for instance, image face tagging) feel weird. A
120service like this can't be broken up into personal agents; it
121still requires a Big Data mainframe somewhere. But it's okay;
122the agents can still talk to it.
124For the most part, Big Data (everyone's) has become little data
125(yours). You no longer have a Facebook profile -- a fancy UI
126backed by a million lines of Facebook goo on one big mainframe.
127Now what you have is a Facebook _server_: a real computer. Or at
128least, a virtual computer (which is much more reliable than any
129one physical computer).
131Is this computer hard to manage? You have the same basic job as
132someone who owns an iPhone: deciding what software to run. If
133you skip this job, your iPhone or your Facebook is still pretty
134useful. You also need to decide what data to keep. An iPhone
135has finite, free storage; the cloud has infinite, non-free
136storage. You still want a warning when your server gets fat.
137But at least it keeps working.
139## Magic step three: free your server.
141This agent-oriented Facebook can't show you ads. But this is not
142actually a huge business problem. Since Facebook owns everyone's
143life, it has the mother of all monopoly lockins. It can just
144bill you $9.99 a month for running your Facebook server. This is
145a great deal, for you and for Facebook.
147But you're still a slave, Neo. A Facebook server still isn't a
148personal server. Monopolies suck.
150Magic works, so Facebook feels guilty. It goes all the way
151toward freeing you, and ruins its own business.
153Now, your server is just a big file whose format is precisely
154defined. You can move it to any hosting service, or even run it
155on a home PC. Since hosting is now a commodity, it costs almost
156nothing and has zero profit margin. It may even come bundled
157with your Internet service.
159Every data center is owned by the local government. If you have
160data to hide from the authorities, compute at home. Most people
161don't have anything to hide and should run in the cloud, because
162the cloud works better. But using the _same platform_ as those
163who do have something to hide creates "herd immunity". You don't
164have to choose between a secure platform with no network effect,
165and a non-secure platform that everyone else uses.
167## Magic step four: free your name.
169Freeing your server also means freeing your identity. It's no
170longer true that Facebook decides who you are. Facebook just
171wrote the algorithm. Your server contains cryptographic secrets
172that control your identity. If your identity was a bitcoin, your
173server would be a giant bitcoin wallet.
175The bad news: lose the file, lose the identity. The good news:
176your server is genuinely personal now. It's yours in every way.
177It's so personal that if you destroy it, it's gone.
179Facebook doesn't even keep its power to create new servers. The
180"real name" policy has done great things to control spam, because
181spam always depends on disposable accounts. But it implies a
184Instead, Facebook borrows an idea from bitcoin and just limits
185the number of identities. If you need one, you have to buy one.
186They don't cost that much; just enough to deter spammers.
188(Is your real name still linked to your identity? Maybe, maybe
189not. There's a role for name validation, but not everyone needs
190to have a real name, and not everyone else needs to know it. A
191dissident, or anyone who wants to speak out and let the words
192speak for themselves, might want a second anonymous identity.
193But sock puppets remain evil -- two names for the same person
194should not interact in the same place.)
196## Magic step five: call it Urbit.
198And, with magic, we've succeeded in turning Facebook into Urbit.
199Technically, Urbit is pretty close to magic, but there is no way
200it's going to happen this way. See the [roadmap](../roadmap) for how it
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