In the future, all computing will be private. Here is how it will work. Or at least, how I want it to work. Let’s call this totally imaginary platform Butyl.
When you use Butyl, only you are able to see what you are doing or saying, and you can talk to anyone in perfect confidence. No external power can either filter or censor the whole Butyl network. Butyl can go full John Perry Barlow against the “weary giants of flesh and steel.”
Butyl is not magic. It is not even particularly new. It is just the combination of two technologies that already exist: confidential computing and deterministic computing. Let me briefly go over the user experience.
No, Butyl does not exist—not yet. Not exactly… I thought I’d share some ideas…
Signing up
To join Butyl: there’s a million ways. Here is one. Go to a store and buy a Butyl card. This is like a credit card. It costs like $10. On the front is your name. On the back is your secret. The secret is under a scratch-off layer, like a lottery ticket. Scratch it off and put the card in your wallet or purse. Congratulations—you are now on Butyl.
Your Butyl name, or planet, is a four-syllable nonsense word, like ~mastex-bintyl. Your Butyl secret is an eight-syllable nonsense word, like ~sorfyl-barteg-poltyv-hopreg.
Eventually you either get tired of Butyl and “churn”—or keep using it, and start to remember these mysterious pseudo-words. Once the secret sticks in your brain and the card stays in your wallet, you have a Butyl brainwallet. It is not just useful for Butyl—it can store and send Bitcoin, Ethereum, etc.
Either way you can lose the card. Put it in the microwave for 15 seconds. Or put it in a sealed envelope and send it to your lawyer. Ideally, you will never need to remember any other magic words—any secrets are made of this wallet. Butyl security is about putting all your eggs in one basket—and watching that basket, as Mark Twain said.
For your whole digital life, you should have one secret, which should be in two places: your own brain, and your own secure computer. And (once anything behind it really matters) split into shards among people you trust. Anything else is just a security risk.
Logging on
Go to butyl.org. Type in your name. Type in your secret. You’re in.
You had to enter twelve three-letter syllables punctuated by eight dashes, with no clicks or returns. You do this every time you open a new Butyl tab.
On a phone, install the Butyl app. Type in your name. Type in your secret. The app will re-prompt you for the secret periodically until it is sure you have memorized it. The secret is deleted when the phone turns off.
Elevator pitch
You logged on. Now what? What is this thing?
Your planet is two things: a crypto wallet and a private deterministic computer. The wallet is a four-syllable planet, which is your public name, and an eight-syllable secret, which is your private password.
The computer is either on or off. If the computer is on, you use your wallet through the computer. If the computer is off, you use your wallet through the front-end app.
To turn a completely new computer on: first, fund its wallet; second, tell it your secret. When you buy a planet card in a gas station, the computer will already be on.
You never have a reason to turn a planet off. It will turn off it if it runs out of money. When this happens, feed it more money. It will turn back on like nothing happened.
A confidential, deterministic personal server
Once you turn your planet’s computer on, you use your wallet through the computer, and you never see the bare wallet screen again—until you turn the computer off.
Your planet is a personal server in the sky. At first you use it just for communication, but eventually you want to migrate all those web apps you use to your own server. Eventually you will have your whole digital life in your own personal server.
You should have your own data and no one else should have it. You should be able to see your data and no one else should be able to see it. These are basic human rights, like toilet paper.
Why do you not have these rights yet? How will Butyl make them possible? And how does all this stuff work?