Sep 27 2022 · 5 min read

A Sacred Space for the Digital Stage

Ian Carroll
Chief Technical Director

Urbit Assembly, Miami Beach 2022

“Explain to me why you think the world needs streaming digital theatre.” – I stumble for words, but after two blinks, I proceed to explain why it’s important.

I heard this question more than once at Assembly, the Urbit software conference this year in Miami Beach, but not nearly as often as I expected.

Urbiters were surprisingly encouraging and diverse, so much so that I’ve never seen a tech conference populated so. There were software engineers of course, and the requisite crypto financiers that swim in the shoals of web3. But there were also quite a few philosophers, artists, and even a few Buddhist Monks who were interested in software’s spiritual side.

Yes, there was still a line for the men’s room and not the women’s room. That’s a problem for every tech conference. Urbit is not flawless, but there seemed to be more women than I usually see at tech conferences there.

The political leanings and identities ran the gamut as well, which coming out of LA was a surprising challenge for me. But I like to mix it up and get other’s perspectives so long as others are willing to hear me out too. I even expand my own understanding that way, when there’s a baseline of friendship at play.

The oranges were some kind of inside joke I wasn’t in on, but it was nice to have the vitamin C

The Urbit conference talks were just as often about the philosophy of humanity and computing as they were about their technology. And boiling it down, the Urbit platform is about:

Data Ownership – You own your digital life, and no one has access except that you allow them. You own your digital art. It doesn’t belong to the companies you use to create or share your works. It will not be looked at or snooped by advertising algorithms preying on you or your hard-cultivated audience.
Calm Computing – The community values creating new things without every app on your device competing for your eyeballs with notifications or “you might also like…” features. The core team has even said they want Urbit to become increasingly boring, so that it’s a firm foundation to bring your own excitement.
Private Communities and Sacred Spaces – Because of its technical structure that allows for private data ownership, whole Urbit communities can be private when they want to be. Urbit leans into the cringe of private community with publications like “How to Create Your Own Secret Society” but in fact, private societies, sacred spaces, are essential nurseries to new artistic ideas. You won’t practice as genuinely if you know it all gets logged and analyzed by AI in a server farm somewhere, or is viweable by the public. As Peter Brook might have said, the theatre needs to be a sacred space. Sacred Spaces can’t be mundane-public. A person is changed upon entering them. By definition, a sacred space needs boundaries between itself and the mundane-public. Urbit allows this.

This cat owns their self and their sacred space. I am just a visitor. (Photograph taken with permission)

It’s not free. You have to buy address space called a “planet”. A planet is the digital representation of you on the Urbit network, and provides you with a potential pseudonym if you wish to keep your meat-space identity private. I’m ~fabfyn-dansef, for example.

Your planet carries a reputation, so even if you’re pseudonymous, you can’t be too big a jerk without the natural human consequences. Also planets are limited in supply. Together the reputation and scarcity of planets limits trolling, bots, vitriol, and the like. Imagine a planet as digital real estate.

You own your planet, so it’s a one-time purchase, not a subscription. And at the time of this writing, a planet costs about $10 or $20. Like real estate, Planet prices fluctuate according to demand. It takes effort to set your planet up, but it’s getting better and easier all the time.

Bikes are everywhere in Miami Beach. They’re smart, elegant and environmentally ethical modes of transport, but accidents happen and so does theft.

No, Urbit is not paying me to pitch this. These are my own words and my own reasoning. This platform is still in beta and they’ll need a more robust network solution to allow for real time streaming video presentation and storage. There’s much still to be built.

If you’re thinking about how Private Societies and Secret Data could be abused, I am too. And Urbit’s core development team has put significant thought into the design to prevent abuse. But they will not use a terms of service contract or policy moderation to enforce safety.

Instead, they’re relying on the strength of the community and the architecture of the network itself to curb abuse. Free speech, private speech, is what Urbit offers, after all.

Disaster scenarios and how to prevent them is an open topic of discussion in the community. But the idea of a truly private digital rehearsal space is very compelling.

dewy dune grass blade —<br>
what’s its reason for living?<br>
it’s such a large world — dewy dune grass blade —
what’s its reason for living?
it’s such a large world

I’ve been thinking for a while about sacred private digital spaces for the arts, ones free of abuse from outside companies. Today, large companies allow streaming, but at the cost of eroding our communities away from us and onto their platforms whose algorithms are not designed to support long-form formats, or nuanced themes. There’s no space to rehearse, and the venue is cramped. No wonder our technique is flagging in quality despite our increased efforts.

A private space is, after all, exactly what a theatre or a rehearsal space is in the real world. We don’t have an adequate digital version of one of those, and we need a good one to bring long form theatre and film to life.

Long form theatre and film are not gone. Attention spans are not shrinking. Current internet companies don’t support our art. Sure, they’ll allow us to stream, but just so that they can steal our audience. We only need the right software to help our audience watch our art distraction-free, and bring our communities together for sharing knowledge and mutual support.

“Urbit fixes this.” Urbiters