# massimo.context-use.com public knowledge > Massimo Albarello's introduction: a builder from Como shaped by ubiquitous computing and digital sovereignty, writing his self-writing autobiography as it happens. Only explicitly published knowledge is included. ## Complete public context - [Full public context](https://massimo.context-use.com/llms-full.txt): Complete text of every published page. ## Public pages - [Intro](https://massimo.context-use.com/p/about/intro.md): Massimo Albarello's introduction: a builder from Como shaped by ubiquitous computing and digital sovereignty, writing his self-writing autobiography as it happens. - [Como origins (1998–2017)](https://massimo.context-use.com/p/about/chapters/1998-2017_como/story.md): Growing up near Como (1998–2017): falling in love with mechanics and electronics, playing a lot of sports, an exchange year in the US, and studying electronics at ITIS Magistri Cumacini. - [Exchange year in Novato (2015–2016)](https://massimo.context-use.com/p/about/chapters/2015-2016_novato/story.md): The exchange year near San Francisco: living with an amazing host family in Novato, graduating from an American high school, Mr. Corey's product design class, a first encounter with Bitcoin, and a first visit to the Computer History Museum. - [Politecnico di Milano (2017–2020)](https://massimo.context-use.com/p/about/chapters/2017-2020_politecnico/story.md): The electronics engineering bachelor's at Politecnico di Milano: the theory behind years of tinkering, a specialization in analog electronics, discovering complexity theory and neuromorphic computing, choosing ETH Zurich — and Covid finally freeing up time to build again. - [Getting into distributed systems (2020–2021)](https://massimo.context-use.com/p/about/chapters/2020-2024_zurich/2020-2021_getting-into-distributed-systems.md): Choosing a specialization after the switch to computer science: Wattenhofer's distributed systems course, the echoes of complexity theory, finally understanding Bitcoin — and going all in, from physics and atoms to math and bits. - [From electronics to computer science (2020)](https://massimo.context-use.com/p/about/chapters/2020-2024_zurich/2020_from-electronics-to-computer-science.md): Arriving in Zurich alone mid-pandemic, building "See you there!" with Luca, discovering that neuromorphic computing was more science than engineering, and switching from electronics to computer science within a month of starting the master's. - [The Web, ubiquitous computing, and the Web of Things (2021–2022)](https://massimo.context-use.com/p/about/chapters/2020-2024_zurich/2021-2022_web-of-things/story.md): How distributed systems led to the Web and its history, Tim Berners-Lee and Solid, ubiquitous computing and Mark Weiser's vision, the Web of Things semester project in Simon Mayer's lab — and a gap semester that turned into an internship at Dominique Guinard's EVRYTHNG. - [Master's thesis at DISCO (2022–2023)](https://massimo.context-use.com/p/about/chapters/2020-2024_zurich/2022-2023_master-thesis-at-disco.md): Back to hardcore distributed systems for the master's thesis: the "world computer" vision, finding the Internet Computer, and developing a faster consensus protocol at ETH's Distributed Computing Group that became Banyan — Best Paper at Middleware 2024. - [The gap year (2023)](https://massimo.context-use.com/p/about/chapters/2020-2024_zurich/2023_gap-year.md): After graduating from the master's in spring 2023, Massimo took a gap year to work full-time on Omnia with Luca — setting a 31 December 2023 deadline to decide whether to turn it into a company, and spending the year building infrastructure for Neom's cognitive city and for the Internet Computer. - [The special alarm clock (2015)](https://massimo.context-use.com/p/about/projects/2015_alarm-clock/story.md): Massimo's first end-to-end product, built in Novato in 2015: a Raspberry Pi alarm clock that woke him with motivational speeches, could be snoozed with the light switch, and only stopped when he got out of bed. - [The robotic hand (2016–2017)](https://massimo.context-use.com/p/about/projects/2016-2017_robotic-hand/story.md): The last-year-of-high-school project in Italy: a robotic hand that mimicked a human hand through a glove embedded with flex sensors, built close to the bare metal to bring together everything Massimo had learned about electronics. - [Building rockets, kind of (2017)](https://massimo.context-use.com/p/about/projects/2017_building-rockets/story.md): Joining the electronics department of Skyward Experimental Rocketry as a first-year Politecnico student, working on the power management system for the Hermes rocket — and learning the hard way why they didn't want freshmen. - [The ubiquitous computer (2020–2021)](https://massimo.context-use.com/p/about/projects/2020-2024_omnia/2020-2021_ubiquitous-computer/story.md): The first version of Omnia, built in summer 2020: inspired by Larry Ellison's network computer, a few friends set out to turn a network of IoT devices into one disposable, cloud-streamed "ubiquitous computer" — the thread that eventually led to the Web of Things. - [Omnia Share (2021)](https://massimo.context-use.com/p/about/projects/2020-2024_omnia/2021-2022_omnia-share/story.md): The 2021 Omnia Share subproject: after the ubiquitous computer prototype and the See You There detour, SPH coaches pushed for something concrete — so the team built a WebRTC-based tool to solve the first real problem they saw at SPH, connecting a PC to the presentation screen. - [ChatIoT (2022–2023)](https://massimo.context-use.com/p/about/projects/2020-2024_omnia/2022-2023_chat-iot/story.md): The 2022–2023 ChatIoT subproject of Omnia: building Web of Things infrastructure, running Zurich's first WoT meetup, and — once ChatGPT launched — giving it access to IoT devices to create ChatIoT, a kind of MCP for IoT, tested in the SICK smart factory. - [Internet Computer infrastructure (2023)](https://massimo.context-use.com/p/about/projects/2020-2024_omnia/2023_internet-computer-infrastructure/story.md): The second-half-of-2023 gap-year subproject of Omnia: a pivot to digital sovereignty and the Internet Computer — turning Omnia into a canister oracle, then building the World-computer infrastructure the community kept asking for, including IC WebSockets, IC Side Services, and non-replicated HTTPS outcalls. - [Neom's cognitive city (2023)](https://massimo.context-use.com/p/about/projects/2020-2024_omnia/2023_neom-cognitive-city/story.md): The first-half-of-2023 gap-year subproject of Omnia: chasing Neom's cognitive-city dream — applying to the Tonomus venture studio at The Line, then watching the project (and the dream) collapse, and turning away from ubiquitous computing. - [Omnia (2020–2024)](https://massimo.context-use.com/p/about/projects/2020-2024_omnia/intro.md): High-level overview of Omnia, the umbrella project that spanned the whole Zurich period, linking out to its individual subproject pages. - [See You There! (2020)](https://massimo.context-use.com/p/about/projects/2020_see-you-there/story.md): SYT ("See You There!"), the meeting app Massimo and Luca built in autumn 2020 to engineer serendipity in pandemic Zurich — sparked by a bus-stop encounter, branded with a Shaka logo, and shelved when the second Covid wave hit. - [Learning from interactions (2021–2022)](https://massimo.context-use.com/p/about/projects/2021-2022_learning-from-interactions/story.md): Learning from Interactions (2021–2022): Massimo's semester project in Simon Mayer's Interactions Lab — using data from the lab's networked IoT sensors to learn a user's preferences and personalize the environment, with the model learning from the error between its predictions and the user's actual input. - [Fast Internet Computer consensus (2022–2023)](https://massimo.context-use.com/p/about/projects/2022-2023_fast-internet-computer-consensus/story.md): Massimo's 2022–2023 master's thesis project — his one shot at real academic research: a faster consensus protocol for the Internet Computer, developed at ETH's DISCO group, which became Banyan (Best Paper at Middleware 2024). - [Fashion brands and retailers (2024–2025)](https://massimo.context-use.com/p/about/projects/2024-2026_fabric/2024-2025_fashion-brands-and-retailers/story.md): Fabric's first bet: fashion brands and retailers, in three acts — enterprise marketplaces, D2C brands on Shopify, and the conference circuit — ending with the decision to leave the vertical in July 2025. - [Fabric (2024–2026)](https://massimo.context-use.com/p/about/projects/2024-2026_fabric/intro.md): High-level overview of Fabric: how the DMA opening up behavioural data and the LLM redesign of consumer apps converged in March 2024 into an infrastructure company — and the two paths the team weighed at the end of 2024. - [Why I'm doing this](https://massimo.context-use.com/p/about/projects/2026_context-use/why.md): Why Massimo is building self-writing autobiographies: everyone has a story that never gets told, AI finally makes one possible, and it is meant to be browsed rather than read from start to finish.