[shadeland]

> the ideas appeared to be deliberately obfuscated It reminds me of early days of http://21.co ,the Bitcoin computer, with the same ambiguous wordings. I assume the libertarian socialistic aspects of this genre of technology is prior to its technical and practical aspects.

[vertex-four]

Actually, I've been following Urbit for a while - it's decidedly not designed to be socialist, or libertarian, it is instead feudalistic. Specifically, the network protocol, once you get past the level of "two computers communicating", is based around a system where users are given land (a "planet") by a landlord (a "star"), and are then tied to that landlord in terms of infrastructure and trust.

The system is also, weirdly, specifically designed so that not every person in the world can have their own planet.

[jacquesm]

> The system is also, weirdly, specifically designed so that not every person in the world can have their own planet.

That's not weird if you look at it from the perspective of artificial scarcity. It took three decades but now IPV4 addresses are worth cold hard cash.

[vertex-four]

Sure, but as a global personal computing infrastructure, the idea of absolutely ensuring that some people's identities will be worth more than others (not only in terms of monetary worth, but in terms of trust, etc) based on an artificial limit is a bit weird.

[jacquesm]

Not if that was the goal in the first place. See also: pre-mining digital currency blocks, land ownership and other attempts to corner the market.

[GFK_of_xmaspast]

> the idea of absolutely ensuring that some people's identities will be worth more than others ... artificial limit is a bit weird

One of the driving forces behind the 'Dark Enlightenment' is the idea that some people are worth more than others.