@@ -1,17 +1,13 @@
11+++
22title = "Urbit for Normies"
33date = 2020-02-12
4−description = "What is Urbit and why should you care?"
4+description = "A layperson’s guide to the coming new internet."
55[extra]
66author = "Erik Newton"
77ship = "~patnes-rigtyn"
88image ="https://media.urbit.org/site/posts/essays/normies-2.png"
99+++
1010
11−## What is Urbit and why should you care?
12−
13−*A layperson’s guide to the coming new internet.*
14−
1511Urbit is a challenging project to fully describe because it’s an entire system rather than a single product. Often when I talk about one of the individual elements of the system, someone will tell me that another company is already building that — and they’re usually right. What sets Urbit apart is that we’re building all these elements at once to work together seamlessly.
1612
1713For that reason, this overview is long. I wanted to explain as much of the system at a high level as possible; this is my attempt to share an image of the entire forest rather than spending too much time with any of the trees.
@@ -22,9 +18,9 @@ I refer to myself as a normie because I’m a lawyer by training, not the typica
2218
2319That’s when a friend introduced me to Urbit, saying it was the most credible project he’d seen in years; he described it as “an open-source decentralized internet project,” and he said it “would give control of computing back to regular people.” That definitely sparked my interest, but I didn’t totally understand it. After looking over the website and watching a couple of obscure descriptive videos on YouTube, my response was threefold:
2420
25−1) This is huge — if it actually works, it’s the future.
26−2) This is real — It’s got working code, dozens of engineers, and a very unorthodox solution.
27−3) I don’t truly understand this — I can’t read the code, and I can barely comprehend the paradigm shift.
21+1) **This is huge** — if it actually works, it’s the future.
22+2) **This is real** — It’s got working code, dozens of engineers, and a very unorthodox solution.
23+3) **I don’t truly understand this** — I can’t read the code, and I can barely comprehend the paradigm shift.
2824
2925So of course I asked for an intro.
3026