THE HUB
A summary
The Hub was developed for the easy town story. The following summary draws on the ideas as presented in the story.
The Hub started as the easy town project’s own social media platform and has evolved into an internet within the internet.
The Hub features include everything social media has to offer, plus a search engine, communication tools, a book library, a cinema, a sound basement, an art gallery, a bank, a shopping mall and more.
‘So what is the Hub?’
‘It’s all social media in one castle,’ Noel proclaimed with pride. ‘Without the advertising or the data collecting. And you get to decide whether your castle is a simple two-dimensional space with just a phone booth to call your kids, or a three-dimensional palace with nearly endless rooms, halls, galleries and, for our friends like Daria, dungeons. And you can walk through each and all of them and pick up things as you stroll along.’
© Charlie Alice Raya, book 1, beginning, week 7
Hub users pay an equivalent of one euro a month in return for ad-free online services, full privacy, and full control over features, algorithms and designs.
Noel stood up and declared solemnly: ‘This, my friends, this is the end of big brother. This is the restoration of our privacy and of our self-determination. This is us, getting our lives back.’
© Charlie Alice Raya, book 1, beginning, week 1
The Hub offers localised features for towns and cities. This includes all town services, and special services for patients, students and tourists, as illustrated in book 3/2, shaping.
Around the world, Hub Stations maintain the Hub network, and the stations include facilities for education, health, art and businesses in order to support the local communities.
For Jack this was the first time he saw a Hub Station and the first time he fully grasped the idea: leave the Hub maintenance to a local team, and use some of the incoming money to extent the Hub Station into a centre for training, workspaces, services and arts. And do so in an area that needs jobs and places where people can come together.
© Charlie Alice Raya, book 2/1, travelling, Australia
Around the world, the Hub acknowledges past and present injustices and neglect.
Back in June, the Hub Developers Team, the Hub Executive Team and Alice decided to acknowledge past injustices by giving indigenous tribes priority for the locations and for the management of the next Hub Stations.
© Charlie Alice Raya, book 2/1, travelling, San Francisco
The Hub Developer Team comprises 777 developers from around the world, with near gender parity and a balanced age structure.
‘Seven hundred and seventy-six sounds like a lot,’ Daria said, ‘but someone who wanted a job on the Hub Team needed at least three verified programmers who’d vouch for the newcomer. And we checked whether the programmers in question code reliably, clean and without any shenanigans. And whether they agree with what we stand for. We also made sure that we have near parity between the genders—’
‘To tell the truth,’ Noel interrupted with a wink, ‘you are unbalancing the balance. Besides, we got programmers from every corner of the world and from nearly all age groups, the youngest being impressive and fourteen, something of a reverse Daria, dark complexion and always dressed in white, and the oldest, eighty-four, who’s something of a programming Roger. I don’t know what it is with old guys, these deep rolling voices. But his code— First class.’
© Charlie Alice Raya, book 1, beginning, week 7
The Hub is international and independent.
