# Transcendent Homes

By [rafa](https://paragraph.com/@rafa0) · 2023-10-12

---

I whisper to myself: “There is no spoon.” I hold the utensil in my hand and its concept in my mind. The spoon is normal: silver, metal, unremarkable. I bought this one at IKEA, a store known for the universal nature of their products. Their motto echoes in my mind: “Democratic Design”. Or maybe the spoon is part of a wedding gift? The memory slips along the surface of its mundanity.

The spoon, and virtually the entire catalog of IKEA products, is a ubiquitous exercise in accessibility. Far-reaching, and yet mostly invisible, their catalog has about 10,000 items. Each one a household utility. As G4RY (a.k.a. ChatGPT) aptly describes: “(Utilities are) a service or resource used by individuals and communities to satisfy basic needs and improve their quality of life”. Together, these stock units (SKUs in supply-chain jargon) compose the homely lives of so many. I look around: plates, chairs, tables, electricity meters, water pipes. They are the building blocks of my day-to-day. They are livelihood.

And yet, the resulting physical _Home_, an anchor enabling me to be fully mid, is — for some reason — unavailable digitally. I think to myself: “There is no _Home_, yet”. There are countless who have posited that _Home_ is not possible without the physicality of objects. That we will always be homeless should our hands not touch the items themselves that compose our world. It is a tempting story, especially given that software itself is mostly licensed – through payment or through control – and not owned.

But I digress. I do not believe that our lack of _Home_ is because of an IRL-URL divide. There is a wave of _Ownership_ taking shape. Our digital objects now _Persist_. We have blockchain enabled items and software programs that live autonomously, in personal (and collectively owned) inventories. This radicle change enables each us, individually and together, to build a subtype of _Autonomous Worlds_: _The_ _Transcendent_ _Home._ For if we can have _Digital Property_, we can build _Homes_. Homes not just for ourselves, but for bots, content, connection, and the craft of assets.

_Transcendent Homes_ are multi-generational spaces we inhabit and fill with inventories, identities, and facilities. Within, agents are safe. Within the dark forest, but protected from the roaming shoggoths. Together, Homes catalize the emergence of interdependent dwellers. Like our current homes, they start with an _Addressable Space_ (term coined by Chenoe), our _Legible Identity,_ and our _Objects._ They are a preservation of _Orientation_, as Kei would say. Each is a reliable, personal, and composable _Digital Locality._ In aggregate, Homes form neighbourhoods that are not controlled, constrained, or silenced by platforms. They are governed instead by the participants of the locality. Here, norms and laws are local, mostly.

That being said, it is clear that its architecture is still undiscovered. Blockchain wallets are closets with inventories, not _Homes_ — at least not yet. This _Home_ cannot exist until we have more than transactions and art. Until, there are spoons. We need the mundane things imbued with our stories: online chairs, tables, beds, shelves. We need digital water and energy. We need _Digital Public Utilities_ of universal design.

---

*Originally published on [rafa](https://paragraph.com/@rafa0/transcendent-homes)*