Introducing: The Looks Protocol

In words

01The problem

Every message needs an address: an email, a handle, a phone number. But the people right in front of you, the ones you can see but don’t know, we have no address for them. There is no way to send a message.

02The fix

The Looks Protocol gives you an address that everyone around you can already see: your look. The head-to-toe details of what you look like are distinctive enough to tell you apart from everyone else in a place, so they can serve as your address.

03How it works

Set your Look with a full-body selfie to make yourself reachable. Someone who can see you can use their view of your look to send you a message, that look becomes the destination address of the message. A vision model matches the two looks to deliver it. No facial recognition. No biometrics.

04Private by design

You can receive a message without revealing any personal information. The look views used are never shared between users, only the vision model sees them. Your Looks address only works where you want it to, where you can be seen, in that outfit.

05Built for a world of intelligent devices

Looks is made for a world of intelligent devices. Let your smart doorbell update your look whenever you walk out of the door. Tell your vision-enabled wearable to “send Hi to the guy with the hat on my left.” Enable communication with and between robots, through visual distinction and Looks addressing.

06An open primitive

Looks adds one more address to the ones we already use, a visual addressing primitive that other applications can build on. Who can reach you, and how contact attempts are filtered or screened, those are implementation choices. An ice-cream seller might stay open to everyone. Someone else might allow only a single person they just shared a glance with.

A network address is nothing without adoption. But this one could spread fast. Am I missing something? Is someone trying to reach me?