I don't think it's exclusively to create a high barrier (although I wouldn't be surprised if that was part of it). The argument was that in order to prevent the

I don't think it's exclusively to create a high barrier (although I wouldn't be surprised if that was part of it). The argument was that in order to prevent the system from experiencing some of the same failure modes as existing internet systems, you had to deliberately fight the brain's desire to draw analogies between Urbit components and existing internet systems. The belief was that this was fundamentally a linguistic problem and could at some level be attacked by inventing an entirely new vocabulary. In other words, you can't just rebuild the stack with the same components used in the old broken stack or you'd just end up with a new broken stack. Not sure how correct this hypothesis is, but it's what I recall. The Urbit team/project has since walked back from this stance somewhat (or at least progressed Urbit also in the more accessible direction), probably due to criticism.