Terminology

  • Arvo: OS
  • Hoon: language
  • Tlon: company
  • Azimuth: ID
  • Ames: Network

imo, falls into the category of vaporwave tech that never manifested itself into anything useful

OS

In 1974 a computer was a mainframe the size of a room and was shared by hundreds of people. By 1984 a computer was the size of a desk and everyone had their own PC. The PC was more flexible and more fun, so it won by a wide margin. Then, with the rise of the internet, the PC’s flexibility slowly became irrelevant — we’re more or less back to the timesharing model of the 1970s.

Urbit OS is the PC to MEGACORP’s mainframe.

ID

Urbit ID is a decentralized addressing and public key infrastructure designed for Urbit OS.

The Urbit ID registry is live and deployed to the Ethereum blockchain. Urbit ID isn’t specifically wedded to Ethereum – someday we’d like it to be hosted by Urbit OS itself.

Related: internet computing

  • 256 (2^8) Galaxies
    • Web analogue: DNS Root Servers
    • The senate that can upgrade the logic of the Urbit ID system by majority vote
  • 65,280 (2^16) Stars
    • Web analogue: ISP, for routing packets
  • 4,294,901,760 (2^32) Planets
    • Individual ID
  • 2^64 Moons

In a way, upgraded version of ENS?

Uses Kelvin Versioning which is an interesting exercise in digital permanence

Libraries