Muddy

Muddy has identified a problem so core to the digital experience that IMO they will inevitably change the world - either through their own software or thru their tech inspiring others. Let's call it the Rule of Ambient Friction — For every social interaction online there is an order of magnitude more articulations needed to support it. Think about how much time you spend switching between windows, urls, chat apps, social apps, creative software, think about how much copy and pasting you do, think about all the links youre sent that open new software, new chat feeds that you have to scroll through to re-orient yourself, think about your cursor moving endlessly across the screen as your eyes try to see thru ten windows at once. Then think about that happening on both sides of each share, you and your friend, your whole team, both endlessly tramping across this terrain in search of shared ground among interfaces. This is all unnecessary, this is all friction stemming from an approach to operating systems whose roots are in file retrieval. If you're sent 20 links a day (low), that's 200 articulations needed. Multiply that across teams, across cities, and you're suddenly in the presence of Muddy's insight, which is that embedded within every second of every moment of time spent online we are wasting an unfathomable amount of time and energy. The PC was invented for a superior relationship between humans and knowledge, from which it evolved into an augmented relationship between humans and humans and has since become a primarily social tool for most of the population. The PC has become the primary medium and mediator between all human communications and it simply was not and is not set up for that. We've seen what happens when humans treat each other like non-humans, when the friction between us is built up to the point where we see each other through a distorted lens - yet somehow we find ourselves in daily experience of a disembodied humanity where our whole model is set up to treat humans like files, like knowledge to be accepted or discarded, like disembodied objects that are a pain to keep track of and understand. The promise of Muddy is a future where the communications and relationships between us are more immediate, more fluid, more creative, more efficient. More Loving. This ambient friction is difficult to identify, more of a feeling that has to be noticed than it is a single instance that can be pointed at. There's a reason they named the company Muddy — it's a verb instead of a noun. Getting Muddy with someone means being in the thick of it together, it's immediate, textural, sensory, zero latency, you are There Together. Getting Muddy means you are either Building Together or Having Fun Together. Building towards something like a Multi-user Desktop is about re-orienting the history of computing towards a shared, relational, human experience within a global network. I see no flaw in Muddy's logic and I adore their vision. Their team is stacked with outlier brilliance who have monk-like dedication to the cause of improving the daily lived experience of billions. Once you've met them and become aware of their insight it's impossible to not pray for their success ❤️‍🔥✨