introducing habitat

I'm writing post-Superbowl, or more accurately to my experience, post-Bad Bunny show. My last day working for my first job was on Friday, and it was a happy accident to leave it on the same weekend the Superbowl came to San Francisco, as if the whole city came alive to celebrate with me. Alive like every full bar on Friday. Alive like Benito's performance, felt through a screen. Alive like leaving behind a corporate existence to ask myself: what does the world need from me right now?

I still haven't quite processed the whiplash I felt from the constant barrage of AI and AI-generated ads to the all-consuming and wholly human presence of Bad Bunny's show, and what all that meant. But I was reminded of the theme of Empty Set Mag's first issue: decay. It's quite obvious now that the internet, and perhaps even our digital experiences at large, are in a state of decay. But as the opening note of the magazine notes, "...without this decompositional process, there could be no regrowth, nothing underfoot for life to take hold of." Maybe that's what I felt, watching the dancers and the laughter and the wedding and the billboard and the pure joy on TV amidst a boring game and already tired commercials: the underfoot for life taking hold. That half-time show felt like the possibility of hope anew, of better times ahead.

So I want to start here: how can we go on like this? In twenty years, will we really be on Big Tech, on Facebook, on Google, on Amazon? And if not, what does the underfoot for new life look like today? What is it we technologists (all of us as technologists) must ask ourselves right now? How can we lay the grounds for regrowth, so that whatever comes when this AI slop, this brain rot, this link decay, has concluded its current decompositional process, a more worthwhile digital life has taken hold?

What if instead of twenty years that timeline was ten? Or five? What questions, then, should we be asking? What conversations should be taking place? What existing gaps are most dire?

I'm here because I believe ATProtocol is that underfoot, seeds for a more human way to be online growing from the spoils of a soon-to-be old web. Already, its potential is clear. And yet ... it is also clear to me that the projects we are seeing now are mere seedlings of what could be if ATProtocol is to truly thrive, and that the protocol itself is in its baby stages, barely sprouting.

With that, I'd like to introduce habitat: a project exploring the edges of ATProtocol, asking, what if we didn't stop here? What if we built data permissioning, now? What are the new rules and constraints for doing multiplayer with ATProtocol? What does a search system for personal data look like with ATProtocol? What if we tried to make indexes shared infrastructure too? Can these things be built at a protocol level?

What if we really did just start doing things?

Our first project is called pear: an acronym for permission-enforcing ATProtocol repository. As we began building ATProtocol applications for ourselves and our communities (simple things like a calendar, docs, photos), we realized granular control over who sees what data cannot be a later add-on. It's a prerequisite. In the last few days, I've talked to at least ten people who didn't realize everything they were doing on Bluesky was completely public. To anyone and everyone. That's why we're building this now.

So much for a short introduction! That's all I'll share for now, but our small team is committed to building in the open, so it won't be long.

Goodbye company device, and hello network! See y'all at AtmosphereConf.

-Arushi 🪩