Add an introduction

README.org

@@ -7,6 +7,31 @@
 
 * Conceptual overview
 
+The federated social web is living in its second golden age, after
+the original success of StatusNet and OStatus in the late 2000s.
+A lot of this success has been around unification of adoption of a
+single protocol, [[https://www.w3.org/TR/activitypub/][ActivityPub]], to connect together the many different
+instances and applications into a unified network.
+
+Unfortunately from a security and social threat perspective, the way
+ActivityPub is currently rolled out is under-prepared to protect its
+users.
+In this paper we introduce OcapPub, which is compatible with the original
+ActivityPub specification.
+With only mild to mildly-moderate adjustments to the existing network,
+we can deliver what we call "networks of consent": explicit and
+intentional connections between different users and entities on the
+network.
+The idea of "networks of consent" is then implemented on top of a
+security paradigm called "object capabilities", which as we will see
+can be neatly mapped on top of the actor model, on which ActivityPub
+is based.
+
+Paradoxically, what may initially appear to be a restriction actually
+opens up the possibility of richer interactions than were previously
+possible on the federated social web while better preserving the
+intentions of users on the network.
+
 ** ActivityPub
 
 # - ActivityPub is an actor model protocol.