So, here’s a quick summary of where we are so far:
🪤⛓ We have to rethink technology from the ground up. To free us from Big Tech and their "app traps". To empower us over our own data and devices.
😲🤯 My radical solution: I'm building an operating system that has no apps!
🏕🌳 Instead, we will freely co-create in a single, shared 3D and 2D virtual world, where everything works just like it does in the real world. This world has objects tied and pinned together with links.
Pretty simple really. It’s all just detail now…
This article describes Structure Links: a way to use links to restructure and mash up all of our digital stuff, now that it’s been freed from its app traps.
Breaking a document down into little bits
In a previous article I described how files and folders are replaced by “objects” and “links” in our new operating system. But an object needn’t be just a whole file or document…
All the bits within a file or document can be pulled out as objects and linked up.
OK, but why?
If we look inside the document we were discussing before, we may see a sequence of text paragraphs, then that link to the photo from the stairway, then more paragraphs.
So, why shouldn't those paragraphs also be objects that we can link to, in the same way as the photo? That way, you could share both photos and paragraphs between two notes or documents by simply dropping their links in.
You could even pin single paragraphs of a document to the walls! There could be a single paragraph object that was linked to by multiple document and wall objects. Now, if you change the paragraph, it updates everywhere it's used.
So we can have documents which are sequences of links to paragraphs and photos, and we have rooms with objects pinned to the walls, that can also be arrays or collections of links to smaller objects like paragraphs and photos.
More digital chunks
Once we start digging deeper into the files that used to be created and used by apps and breaking them up into smaller chunks, we can find all sorts of nuggets that we can re-use as linkable objects.
In the "old days" of apps, where some apps so jealously guarded their data that their files were in closed and proprietary formats, you wouldn't be able to even think of doing this. But now we don't have any apps, just a space to play in, we can start to dig in to their data, their files and documents, and think about how their inner elements can be pulled out and re-structured to suit us.
Now, we can simply call these data chunks “objects” and point at them with links. We can build a web of little objects that can be re-purposed, re-structured and mashed up how we like.
For example, each to-do of a to-do app can be an object we can link to anywhere. Each calendar event, address or phone number can be linked to from anywhere.
We can even dig into photo files and pull out the "metadata" that gives information about the location the photo was taken and about the camera that took it - make that another object that we can link to.
Having deconstructed everything, we can just build it all back up again: a list of messages is as good as your old “messaging app”. A box of contact card objects is your "contacts app". A list of to-dos your “to-do app”. A list of links to calendar events is rendered as a calendar we can pin to our wall, without a separate calendar app.
Nesting objects
So, why can’t we also just drop a link to a whole document into the middle of another document, alongside the paragraphs and photos? This would allow documents to be nested, or to have documents linking to and from each other.
The operating system can show a nested document in a way that it can be either expanded and read in-place, or pulled out alongside its host document, perhaps floating in 3D space until you shove it back, or pin it somewhere.
In fact, since we're freeing our minds here - why not just drop the link to your whole photo collection on the gallery wall into your document? Again, the operating system rendering your document to the screen would show that entire collection in some reduced form, in-place, and then allow you to expand it for more detail, zoom right into it from the document, or pull it right out alongside.
Personal webs; grandpa Tim’s Web
We've actually arrived at a model for data that's becoming popular in apps such as Obsidian, Roam, Logseq, Notion, Tana, etc. These allow you to wire notes and media into personal planning, thinking and mind-mapping spaces or "personal webs".
But we're making a whole operating system like that, not just a single app, and we're going for a shared 3D space, not a - somewhat or entirely isolated - 2D one.
So we have a personal web - why not just use the existing Web?
The primary difference at this point (there's more to come!) is that the stuff at the ends of our links isn't complete web pages or documents, because we've deconstructed documents down to their basic elements: paragraphs and media.
Unlike the Web, we can embed not just images in our pages, shared with other pages, but individual paragraphs or other text chunks, as well as many other kinds of little objects. We can even embed entire 3D places inside them, seamlessly.
Legacy import
Even though we’re building all this from scratch and taking the radical approach of throwing out the apps, we don’t need to cut ourselves off completely from the present-day world! There’s vast amounts of data out there that we need to bring on board.
Our object web is ultimately expected to be largely created in-world, rather than via literally importing and breaking down existing folders and files and mapping them into our linked virtual world objects. Our approach of files and folders being replaced by objects and links, along with files and trapped data being broken up into webs of linked objects, was meant more in an abstract or conceptual way.
But the Object Network should obviously be seeded with the import of existing data. So this literal filesystem import could be a great way to kick things off.
Once doing that, we can then go on in a similar way to facilitate the import of data available on internet protocols like email, the web, chat, etc. This would be done the same way, by breaking down their data into our linked objects - and maybe reassembling back up again from our objects to their formats, to send an email for example.
How that may look
This picture illustrates how some of this may look: it’s a 3D world with us in it, along with 3D rooms. There are also flat 2D objects on the walls, the floor, and floating in space. Some of these objects appear in more than one location, thanks to links. Some objects are embedded in other objects and render just as well like that.
We can have notes, messages and documents made up of paragraphs and images, to-dos, events, contacts, etc., all linking to and from each other in collections and sequences, perhaps nested within one another, or stuck to the walls, on the table top or even just lying on the floor.
This could be experienced as a virtual world on a flat PC or mobile screen, in virtual reality, or in augmented reality, where virtual rooms and objects map onto physical ones.
Note that, in 3D, the 2D objects are like panels, with thickness. So the examples below sometimes call them that. In fact, walls are panels, too.
Mash-up examples
Now that we can re-structure everything to suit ourselves, why not have a calendar event pointing at a single relevant to-do? Why not also stick that important to-do up on the wall of your office or kitchen? When you check the to-do off in the to-do list, it's also shown "done" in the calendar event and on the wall. The to-do or shopping list, freed from its app, allows you to pick out a single to-do and drop it into an event to remind you about it. Tick it “done” either there or back in its to-do list, and it’s ticked “done” everywhere.
Here are many more examples of this power of links - it’s a long list so feel free to simply dip in and sample it! Once again, “panels” refers to 2D objects in a 3D world.
Documents
There are panels representing documents, that know about layout.
You can drop text objects into them and they will then line up with one another, and you can scroll them and easily re-order their sequence of paragraphs
Similarly, there's a chat panel, where the stack of message objects it contains can't be re-ordered as they are timestamped, so can only be added to at the end
These document and chat panels are just sequences of links to paragraphs, but with extra render and interaction around adding new objects
You can easily build a new document or a poster by simply collecting and dropping some links into or onto it
If you find a gallery owned by someone, you can grab a link to a picture you like and embed it in a document you're writing
You can drop links to paragraph or message objects that you find elsewhere, links to selected chat messages or links to photos you like on someone's wall
You can of course, link to bigger things in your document, like other documents, or to complete 3D objects, or to an entire virtual city!
Social media
Your messages can now be composed of richly diverse elements in the world: if you have its link, you can drop it in! Link to an entire 3D region, or to a leaf on a tree in that region
A social media post can link to an image you found and one of the paras in a document, or to a single chat message taken from another list, or a small list of related messages, posts or media
Blog posts link to their author, to their images, to their comments and can link to a forum thread right in the middle
That forum may have posts in it that link to entire galleries
Paste a huge map or wall of photos into a little message and it will show embedded as a smaller version; then it can be popped back out alongside by the recipient, to become huge again
Short-form posts can embed long-form articles and vice-versa
Your social network is just list of friends and their news feeds
Sharing is now “a place not an action”, just like in real life where stuff has a location; and things continue to update even after sharing, as you’d expect in a virtual world
Create your own news feeds of posts found on other feeds
Aggregate multiple feeds from diverse sources by simply creating a list of feeds; the operating system will spot this and interleave them in time order when rendering it
Living and organising
Make a daily dashboard panel, with links to today’s to-dos, events, photos, notes, people, etc.
Put up photo on the virtual kitchen wall and everyone can add comment text objects underneath - in fact, just pin comments onto any of each others’ stuff
Keep a shopping list in the virtual kitchen that everyone can see when going out
Before going out, anyone can quickly make a personal shopping list for today from selected items on the family one by grabbing just the links to the items of the shared one that they plan to fetch themselves
Pick out one to-do from a friend's list and put it in your own daily dashboard - when done, ticking that to-do obviously also shows it done on their list
If you want to share a poster from your virtual bedroom, simply grab its link and pin it to the kitchen pinboard
Now if you change anything on the poster, everyone in the kitchen can see that change too
Drop in a link from your scrapbook of notes and photos to one of your mum's notes on the desk in her virtual study
Pin a link in the middle of your virtual kitchen wall to one of your scrapbook photos
Create a chat panel on the kitchen wall, which everyone can grab a link to to put in their own rooms
Calendars, maps
Drop links to any objects with start times into a list, to render arrayed into a calendar
A calendar event object links to its RSVP (attendee) objects which can in turn link to each attendees' contact object
You can use a link to the list of event attendees to set the people with permissions within a chat group - now if someone RSVPs attendance, or cancels, they get automatically added or removed from the group, without anyone writing any code for that
Drop links to any objects that have a location into a list, to render plotted on a map; if locations change (e.g. a person moving), you can see them move on the map in real time
Drop links to any objects with the same or similar types into a list, to render as a table like a spreadsheet
Weather could render calendar-like, or as hourly segments across the 3D sky!
You can merge other hourly event streams or feeds for a day alongside the weather for that day at each hour
You can build a family room to share stuff
Just quickly snap or link together some panels into a room
Then put a panel on the wall as a pinboard space to pin or link to messages and photos
Everyone can visit this room and will see each other and can say "Hi!", and add to the pinboard.
You can build a city
Build a house from panels linked into rooms and rooms linked together
Add more rooms to build your virtual family home, perhaps one room for each of you
Then build a street made of links to all the houses of your family and friends
Add some extra houses by creating one house and dropping its link up the street
Then build a city with links to the streets of other families
You can build shared experiences like a gallery
Place a large city gallery with walls linking to everyone's favourite photos in their albums or photo frames
Rebuild the gallery to create many rooms organised by theme
A picture matching two themes in the gallery can appear twice with a link from each room
If you like the gallery's "landscape" room, simply grab its link and paste it onto your own virtual house
Now you can wander in easily at any time (but you'll be in the gallery now, so need to hit the back button to return home!)
Or a warehouse
Create a warehouse store full of links to 3D objects to share with each other
Fill it with plants, tables, trees, rocks, houses, castles
If you want to use something, you don't walk out with it, you just grab a link to it and drop it where you want
You can even grab a bit of that castle: if you like its tallest tower, simply take its link
Around a 3D town
Create a billboard panel out of links to text paragraphs and images, describing an upcoming meeting or event
Remind everyone by putting the billboard up around your virtual city, by simply dropping its link down
If the event time changes, when you edit the billboard, all instances around update
Create signs pointing the way to landmarks, containing a link to allow direct teleporting
Build a 3D tourist info room for your area, with posters, events, contacts, etc. Visitors can grab links to interesting things in there and drop them into their own list to take back home
Build a library
Next to the city gallery on the high street, put down a city library, and fill it with links collecting the best documents people want there
Maybe the holiday plans, favourite recipes or music reviews you each have in your rooms or documents "published" by other families
Collect a stack or array of some links to snippets of text and images that you find useful for a short story you're writing
Obviously, a stack, array or list of links is also an object in the world, so has its own link
If you like a paragraph in someone's document, then just grab a link to it for your snippet collection
Sit in the library and surround yourself with those snippets while you compose the story
You can build entire worlds
Create a pretty tree on a little hill
Replicate a link from your tree to your sister's leaf, repeated all over it
Then multiply that tree up to a forest on a mountain by dropping hill and tree links all over
If your sister changes the leaf to red in autumn, all trees that use the leaf go red together
Attach that mountain to the back of your city with just a link, and another link to get back again
But have a signpost in the forest that also contains the city's link so you can save the walk and teleport there!
If you visit a fantasy village made by a different group of folk, and like it, share its link with the other families in the chat room
Then if everyone in each town agrees, you can all co-create a highway through the hills to link the two towns up in each direction
Free to re-structure
Without apps, we are free to play with our data in new ways, to combine it all in ways that no app would previously allow. Data is no longer jealously guarded by individual apps and kept in inscrutable formats. All of our data is now out in the open, in open standard formats that all devices running this operating system can understand on sight.
We can simply drop links between our objects and collections of objects. We can create a collection of, and links between: one to-do, three notes, five photos and two calendar events, then pin it to the ceiling and to a leaf on a tree, and no app developer can stop us!
We've broken free of the "app trap" and can use the power of links to freely re-structure, mash up and organise our digital lives, any way we like.
What do you think? Drop your thoughts into the comments below. And I’ll see you in the next Lab Note!