Summary

The Human API is a proposed internet framework designed to recenter the web around human needs and potential, emphasizing control, connectivity, and data ownership.

Abstract

The Human API represents a paradigm shift in internet design, advocating for a human-centric model that prioritizes individual control over technology. It aims to facilitate connections between people based on mutual needs and desires, while also allowing users to manage their own data and privacy. The concept challenges the current profit-driven algorithms, seeking to maximize human potential instead. The initiative's development is envisioned as a collaborative, open process, where the collective wisdom of the global community shapes its evolution. By providing a single access point for data and enabling seamless communication across networks, the Human API aspires to foster innovation, balance, and personal growth without the constraints of competitive tech monopolies.

Opinions

The internet's current design is flawed, prioritizing profit over human well-being and potential.
Technology should empower humans, not control them, and the Human API is proposed as a solution to restore this balance.
The Human API is intended to be a universal, open-source tool that anyone can use or contribute to, without centralized ownership or control.
It emphasizes the importance of giving individuals the power to protect their data and choose how they interact with technology.
The initiative suggests that technology should help humans evolve and experience new things by removing barriers to progress.
The design philosophy behind the Human API includes accessible technology that respects user agency and provides balance according to individual needs.
It posits that innovation should be easier and more collaborative, with companies working together rather than competing to solve the same problems.
The concept advocates for a single, user-controlled repository for personal data, where companies pay for access rather than owning copies of the data.
Effective communication in networks, including social networks, requires shared understanding and the removal of barriers to communication.
The Human API envisions a world where individuals can explore and create without judgment, and where everyone benefits directly from the data they generate.

The Human API

Redesigning the Internet to be Human-Centric

I have examined the internet and tried to understand how it can be so powerful and yet so dangerous. I believe I figured out the answer. The problem is that the internet was designed without humans at the center. It was designed to make money, and that it does very well.

The Goals

The goal of the human API is to give control to the human in the human-technology relationship. At some point, the control shifted to the technology, and we were driven by the algorithms designed to drive profits. These were based on inefficient principles though, and were not designed to help technology maximize human potential.

The Human API is a mechanism for connecting humans to humans.

It connects those who need something to those who have it.

All are welcome to use the API to connect to whomever they want.

And all are welcome to restrict access to their API from anyone, at any time, for any reason.

This gives humans the ability to protect themselves from outside interests but also allows them to explore human nature the way they want.

As humans, we constantly want to evolve and experience new things. Technology should be a mechanism for removing the barriers to this.

I want the Human API to be the mechanism for removing all barriers to human progress.

The Build

I am not going to build anything around this. I designed it according to my views of the world. I don’t want my views to drive it going forward. I want the world to have ownership, not me. I don’t know the best way to organize all of that. But I don’t need to, because someone does. I don’t want to have people compete for the opportunity to work on this. I want everyone who wants to be involved in it to have that option. We should have an endless supply of choices. We do. We just have no easy way to organize the choices we need at a given time.

The Design

The purpose of the API is to give humans the easiest way possible to enjoy the world around them. Balance means different things to different people, but everyone can find theirs if the technology in their life starts being accessible to them when they want to use it, not when the technology decides it wants to be used. This shifts the power from the technology back to the user in the relationship.

This also affects the way we innovate. This should allow a much easier path to innovation. Every company can find its own monopolies by providing users an easier path forward. And companies can stop competing against each other to solve the same problems. All of the solutions to one problem should be combined. This will yield an easy solution to the choice of the best solution to a given problem at a point in time.

The Data

Look at the big tech companies. They are starting down this path. Each is built up of specific things they do better than other companies. We need to figure out how we prioritize cooperation instead of competition.

Look at the current “internet celebrities”. People who are sharing their experience of the world with others. People don’t mind paying them because they offer some shared experience of the world coupled with some unfamiliar experience. This allows us to see an expanded view of the world.

People create different forms of media. The common denominator is the person. We lost that before. We need to give people a way to control the flow of information to figure out the best way to grow, not overload them with problems they don’t have the context to understand. We should have a single access point to a single piece of data. Why do we let the companies have copies of our data? It should live in one spot, wherever we find it the easiest to access.

Then, if companies want to use our data, they can pay for whatever access they need, and over the duration they are using it. When we centralize it, we can easily track the usage if we don’t allow copying. Right now, we use a multitude of services that are mostly similar in concept, but with different tools that add value. We need to start creating building blocks that humans can easily tap into. This will only be efficient when all information is freely available.

The Trick to Making It All Work

Communication between two nodes in any network has to be two-sided. They have to speak the same language. They need to have the same protocol. However you say it, the point is the same. They need to come from a place of shared understanding. This is true of people in social networks as well as computers in hardware networks. We need to remove the barriers that exist to communication.

We exist in the state we are in because people are not good at finding similarities. We focus on finding differences. This is because differences are interesting. Throughout history though, we have created habits of fearing the unknown. That is because there wasn’t an easy way to understand the unknown. Now, we have the internet. That changes everything. All of a sudden, we can learn about whatever we want. We need to shift the focus to making the stuff on there worth learning.

We do this by letting everyone explore the world that they want, not the one that those around them want. Then we let the individual balance between consumption of information and creation of information as they need at a point in time. We don’t need to judge them.

We are balancing our lives however we can and with what we currently have. We should help others find their balance, not tell them how to balance. Teach them to balance. Understand that everyone is in a different spot to learn. Come together. Figure out the best ways to teach a given idea. Figure out what is true of your world. Then prove it. Share your solution. I want to pay you for it. I can’t yet, but I will at some point. That is my goal in all of this. I want you to directly benefit from the data you create.