Deta is a company whose purpose is to elevate minds through delightfully human computing. We want to create joyful products that enhance human intelligence in the many forms it presents, whether understanding, decision making, or creativity. That's our starting point.

Today we're announcing Deta Surf's official alpha release. Deta Surf is a browser that aims to put us — the user — back in the middle of our digital lives. Here's more of the context behind it.

Intelligence is context constrained 1

By way of Alan Kay's example — "only a genius could multiply" in ancient Rome 2. The context Roman numerals create doesn't support humans multiplying. We've since abandoned Roman numerals, and multiplication is everywhere.

Personal computers and web browsers

Personal computing is a wonderful idea. A machine that can simulate any media, but that's built around us. It reflects our tastes, has our stuff, and helps us understand, decide, and create.

Many of us are using personal computers every day. On them, we spend much of our time in the web browser. It's become the super-app, the main context. This makes sense, because the web is so engaging and powerful.

Artificial intelligence, next up?

AI is promised to be the next foundational change. Silicon Valley's biggest players are racing to make computers intelligent. They're spending billions to train bigger and better language models, which compress the rich tapestry of the web into functions that let us generate new media, based on context we provide: a prompt, an image, a computer program.

But just like human intelligence, these models are context constrained — effectiveness varies wildly with context. If we want AI to be useful to us, it needs to tie into our context.

Where's our context?

It's everywhere.

We think the web browser pulled the personal out of the computer. It scattered our stuff all over the web. We spend our time context switching between remote institutions who hold it, feeling underpowered and overwhelmed.

This is the problem. Computers can be our best tool to help us better understand, decide, express and create. But without a context built around us, we may be browsing everything on the internet with something like Roman numerals.

Deta Surf

Deta Surf is a browser that takes a swing at this problem. It's early, but reflects ideas that we wanted to see in a browser that puts us at the center.

Surf is modern, in the sense that you can plug your context directly into AI, to get the most out of it. But its design was largely inspired by much older ideas — personal computers & desktop operating systems & environments like Hypercard. Many decisions reflect this, and owe a deep debt to them.

Surf is still in early alpha, so expect rough edges and note a few things. We've included a short video below — but we think it's better you just give it a twirl.

Acknowledgements

The Deta Team,
past and present