Omnia started in the last few months of my bachelor, when me and a couple of friends (Luca in particular) finally had some time to get back into projects, thanks to the first Covid wave. Being locked at home, and not having to waste time commuting to university, I finally had time to start building something again.
It grew into a long-running effort that spanned the whole Zurich period. "Omnia" ended up being an umbrella name over several distinct subprojects, each worth its own page. This page is the high-level overview; the subproject pages below tell the specific stories. Here is my first ever podcast interview where I go more into detail on Omnia's story until then (late 2022).
Whatever we ended up building, it was always around the two trends we cared most about: ubiquitous computing and digital sovereignty. Ubiquitous computing drove the first years — the ubiquitous computer, Omnia Share, ChatIoT and, in the end, Neom's cognitive city. While digital sovereignty kept us busy for the rest of the gap year building Internet Computer infrastructure.
Subprojects
- The ubiquitous computer (2020–2021) — the first version of Omnia, built in summer 2020 and inspired by Larry Ellison's network computer.
- Omnia Share (2021) — the pivot to something concrete: a tool to connect a PC to a screen for presentations at the Student Project House.
- ChatIoT (2022–2023) — giving ChatGPT access to IoT devices via the Web of Things: essentially MCP for IoT, before MCP existed.
- Neom's cognitive city (2023) — the gap-year push to build infrastructure for Neom's cognitive city.
- Internet Computer infrastructure (2023) — the second-half gap-year pivot: leaving ubiquitous computing behind to build tooling the Internet Computer's developer community wanted.