Ara

Computers are the best technology for expressing and exploring our minds. The result of expressing our thoughts through computers produces structured, precise information. This information has various names:

• Code
• Model (in machine learning)
• Program
• Software
• Smartcontract (in blockchain)
• Script
• Instructions
• Algorithm
• etc.

All this information has unique characteristics: the computers or software could execute the data, including the conditions. That means they process the information partially depending on the condition. 

Computers could partially replicate our brain activity. It's not meant to replicate fully our brain to replace us in the future. It's not meant to delegate some of our brain activity to automate human tasks. The main goal of computers is to increase our brain activity, including our imagination.

Analogously, consider our brain as the laptop hardware. Then the computers are the USB, which adds extra storage. The USBs are pluggable mobile but have less hardware capacity. But with the USB, we can share the data between multiple laptops.

The ability of computers to share data over the internet is crucial. In analogy, the internet is the mobility and pluggable parameter of computers. Surprisingly, the original pioneers of computers haven't considered the internet part of computers.

But why is the internet a crucial part of computers? Because software is a product of our thinking. For us, the most necessary aspect is to share our ideas. One person does not build ideas. It always relies on the ideas of other people. You need other ideas for the information; you need others not to reinvent the wheels but to use what others built as giants by simply improving their ideas. You need others who would help you to improve your idea. We may need to collaborate on complex ideas with others. Lastly, our inner child tells us to share what we know with others.

Thus, computers mediate between people in real-time or from different eras to work on the idea. Software is meant to be created by people for other people. Even if it's not the code itself, the user of the software or the result of the software must be for other people.

Thus, we need to understand the internet as the inter-connected software, where everyone can change and modify the software. Understanding the internet opens up the true potential of computers for us. Understanding the internet opens up new software that has not yet been seen worldwide.

One potential kind of software is folk software. It's software created by one person. Then, it was improved over time by other people. It might shift from its original form. The second important aspect of folk software is that it has a general version and different variants per user or group of users.

Consider, for example, video-sharing software, YouTube. If YouTube was folk software,  the current version would be generic. But every user might have YouTube with a different feature set. For example, some people would prefer to see a 10-star rating instead of the like buttons. Others would want to see the auto-pausing after a few seconds.

Sadly, YouTube is not a folk software. It's an online service with full ownership belonging to Google. When you were using the software, how many times have you wished it had the feature but didn't? Maybe you were sending a request to the developers to add that feature? Sadly, a current industry driven by profit would add the feature if it aligns with the profit they get, not by what is needed for a specific user.

Even when you use software offline, and want to adjust it, the current software requires deep technical skills that most of us lack.

Ara helps to adjust the software that is interconnected to each other. Which means we can compose multiple software into something new. Ara also helps to discover and publish your ideas with other people. In other words, Ara makes all software interconnected, composable, and adjustable by any user with minimum technical skill.

Ara tries to work with the existing software rather than build the ecosystem from scratch. Ara consists of three parts.

The Meta protocol that makes apps self-explaining. The app could be written in any language or in any internet topology. However, the software must have an endpoint that describes what it's doing so that anyone can use it without knowing its API or documentation upfront.

The second component of the Ara is the blockchain-based indexer of all apps worldwide. It also provides a payment system that helps to sort the programs by popularity and rewards the users whose ideas are used by others for profit.

The last part of the Ara is the client. The client helps modify, publish, collaborate, or discover software on the internet. The client comes with an AI assistant that understands the meta protocol.

When a remixed version of the music becomes more popular than the original song, it's fair to share the reward both for DJ and composer.

In the same way if a user creates a variant of the software, and commercializes it, then we want to reward the original authors too. It's a matter of ethics not legal rights. 

In today's IT economy is like that. The unknown people dedicate their time to build an open-source software. Then, commercial companies build the software and become billionaire. With the ara we want to reward the open-source developers too.

We want to make the economical model in a fair way. By fairness I mean, when an entrepreneur thinks of the commercial product, he shouldn't bother himself with the reward sharing, it's a psychologically implies his product is not his. At the same time, we want open-source software makers to earn a passive income. To solve it, we use the cryptocurrency in our indexer. And advised for all app makers to use the Ara cryptocurrency or backed by it cryptocurrency as the app's payment.

This way, if user pays for the service, then ara makes sure that all other services depending on the service also get the share from the users. Using the crypto currency is advised but not required. Then what are the benefits for the commercial app makers?

The indexer is what connects the client and the software with the meta protocol. It's more like a search engine, app store and DNS together. The most important part of the indexer is the recommendation system. There will be other softwares like the one that commercial app maker is creating, there will be another apps that is built on top of the commercial app. Thus, to make the software discoverable for more users, that software must be higher in the rank. And that ranking is defined using the payments. The higher the app traffic, the more discoverable it is.

To prevent commercial apps from purchasing the traffic, we add additional method in our blockchain. Namely, we also look at the user's activity. The more they use the ara, the diverse is their app pool, the more weight it has in the software ranking. Of course it's the matter of the change as people constantly finds the weakens. The duty of updating the fairness in the recommendation system relies on the ara organization.

Any indexer according to the rule must be open-source. And people may create a fork with better recommendation system. Thus, if the ara foundation makes something wrong, there are always people who can instantly replicate and create the better version. In short, there is no any final authoritive, everyone is replacable.