The Object Network is an architecture for programming and connecting computers.

Its goal is to put the power of networked computers back into the hands of ordinary people and free us and our data from the "priesthood" of big tech with their love of obscure and arcane technology that hides and exploits our digital stuff.

The Object Network creates a global landscape of updating data "Objects", all linked together and owned and controlled by each of us. Objects are "internally animated" with predictable behaviours that can be intuitively configured.

This architecture should be especially beneficial in building the "Metaverse" as a seamless, open, shared, global virtual world. In this application there will be Object Types to represent people, places and property in the world.

The primary unique feature of a Metaverse built using this Object Network technology stack is the pervasiveness of links to its dynamic, distributed Objects. Such links will point to objects representing everything in the virtual world, including land, structures, items, avatars, identities, media, images, textures, shaders, animations and behaviours.

The links of the Object Network are similar to those of the web, with its URLs. And, like the web, no-one owns the Object Network: anyone can create a server and host objects, linking them to anyone else's. Also like the web, a server or host crash simply freezes the corresponding parts of the virtual world, everything else carries on fine.

Links mean that you have a handle on all of your in-world properties. You own and are in complete control of them. You decide where they're hosted, and you can migrate or transfer ownership of anything, both through re-hosting and/or re-signing. You can even use your mobile phone as a host for objects you own.

You, or your avatar, are also an object, of course! You own and control your own identity objects and can have many persona objects linked to that, accessed from any device that you own or control.

Object links are easy to share and re-use; you can literally attach anything to anything via their links, making world-building and co-creation easy through shared and re-used property objects.

You can create a room or a world, then simply link it together with all of your other rooms or worlds. With permission, you can link up with worlds created by others to make huge explorable super-worlds owned by people all over the globe. You can carry your objects with you and place them in regions owned by others.

The end result will be a shared cyberspace or Metaverse seamlessly weaved together through these links, owned by no-one and everyone, that spans the globe just like the web does.

Here are the design goals for the Object Network Metaverse:

• get started, enter the world, create a space, begin building, within minutes of download
• view and change "live" (in-world) the look and behaviour of your regions, items, personas, etc
• freely create land regions, link, cross-link and unlink them to and from other regions
• do all this with regions and objects created by friends and family
• interact in-world with someone directly over the wifi when you're both at home
• link up regions seamlessly so you can simply walk across without teleport or page refresh
• pick up an object in one region (room or world), walk over and re-use it in another
• allow others either to invisibly view your regions or to allow them to be visible and interact
• replicate a link to an object so that when the original changes, all change
• carry your identity and property from region to region or world to world
• guarantee your ongoing land, identity and property ownership
• migrate everything from one system or region server to another
• keep interacting even when disconnected or servers go down

As described above, these features will be implemented through the simple concept of a link to each of your objects and those of others that are hosted in various places.

For more technical readers, the Object Network comprises four components which map to the corresponding Web components as follows:

• Objects are chunks of data linked together and sharing updates (Notation and Notification: "ONN")
• Objects and their updates are shared over the network (Protocol: "ONP")
• Objects come from or interact with the real world and with us (Types of data, input/output: "ONT")
• Objects can be internally animated by simple rules (Rules programming language: "ONR")

Comparison of the Object Network Metaverse with existing systems

Pictures and slides on the Object Network Metaverse

Many more broader and deeper articles and presentations

Let me know what you think! There's a contact email at the base of the page.

Duncan Cragg, 2021. Contact me