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Understanding Urbit #5 - Urbit & Bitcoin

Understanding Urbit

Release Date: 03/26/2020

Understanding Urbit #7 - Tlon Operations & Community show art Understanding Urbit #7 - Tlon Operations & Community

Understanding Urbit

Tlon COO Erik Newton and Community Manager Kenny Rowe join this session to provide some additional background to Tlon and the Urbit Community. 

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Understanding Urbit #6 - Built to Last show art Understanding Urbit #6 - Built to Last

Understanding Urbit

The recurrent theme of calm computing is explored more deeply in this discussion with Logan Allen whose focus is infrastructure and product at Tlon.

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Understanding Urbit #5 - Urbit & Bitcoin show art Understanding Urbit #5 - Urbit & Bitcoin

Understanding Urbit

Christian Langalis is the resident bitcoin ambassador to the Urbit team. His motto is sound money requires sound computing and this well describes his role is to develop Bitcoin infrastructure for the Urbit ecosystem. 

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Understanding Urbit #4 - Urbit ID & the Network show art Understanding Urbit #4 - Urbit ID & the Network

Understanding Urbit

As Ted indicated in episode 2, The Urbit ID public key infrastructure and the Urbit network are core to the way individual Urbits communicate and maintain self-sovereignty. In this episode we hear from three members of the Tlon team, each explaining the part of the system they are most familiar with. OS lead Ted returns to introduce the subject.

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Understanding Urbit #3 - Technology and Freedom show art Understanding Urbit #3 - Technology and Freedom

Understanding Urbit

The effect technology has on individual freedom is a recurring theme in lunchtime discussions in the Tlon office. Chief Product Officer, Anthony Arroyo has a background in linguistics and the philosophy of technology. This positions him well to explain the nature of this relationship and how Urbit positions itself between the two.

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Understanding Urbit #2 - Under the Hood of the Urbit OS show art Understanding Urbit #2 - Under the Hood of the Urbit OS

Understanding Urbit

Engineer Ted Blackman works on the Urbit OS kernel. Like many Tlon employees, Ted initially came to the project as an open source contributor. In this discussion Ted breaks the operating system down into its components and explains its relationship to Urbit ID which we will cover in-depth in episode 4. 

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Understanding Urbit #1 - Introducing the Personal Server show art Understanding Urbit #1 - Introducing the Personal Server

Understanding Urbit

Few software projects today share either the contemporary relevance or fringe mystique of the Urbit Operating and Identity System. As a highly secure personal server, Urbit aims to deliver on many of the ideas pioneered by the Cypherpunks, and, after nearly 20 years in development the platform has begun a phased launch. Urbit gives us persistent digital identity, a new benchmark for secure computing, and maybe even an open source response to more modern social computing platforms like WeChat and Kakaotalk.

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Christian Langalis is the resident bitcoin ambassador to the Urbit team. His motto is sound money requires sound computing and this well describes his role is to develop Bitcoin infrastructure for the Urbit ecosystem. 

Christian’s interest in Urbit derives from a desire for a sound foundation on which Bitcoin can operate. He makes the argument that for all its potential, bitcoin cannot offer the benefits of sound money (sound being a term that requires specific definition in this case) without a sound computing platform on which to operate. Unix sysadmins have access to this today, but that leaves the future unevenly distributed.

More than just a piece of Bitcoin infrastructure, Christian sees Urbit as a response to the shift toward unowned software and data caused the popularity of Software as a Service and content streaming platforms. He also sees the platform as an opportunity for individuals to access the full power of server computing, instead having to rent individual functionalities from subscription based services. 

Christian views data harvesting, and the pursuit of user attention as deep personal abuses in a way that recalls Galen’s reference to Stockholm Syndrome in episode 1

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