I live in two worlds right now. You live in one world with me, which is ‘the internet’. But I also live in another world, and it’s called Hyperboria. It’s hiding inside the internet, and you can’t get there. But I’m there.
You can’t stumble upon it. You can’t Google search it and find a way in. You have to build your own path to Hyperboria, and unless you’re comfortable around computers, networking, coding and technology, you’re never going to get there. Don’t even bother trying.
There’s not many people in Hyperboria. It’s almost a ghost town. But those who live there are very smart, and very technically knowledgeable people. But there’s more people finding their way there all the time, as they learn about Hyperboria.
There’s no Windows client though, and unlikely to be anything for Windows in the near future, so you’ll need to make your way there using OS X or Ubuntu. I installed Ubuntu and set it up so that I can get onto Hyperboria. You might need to do the same if you end up interested in this.
“What if you were around when the internet was being built for the first time?”
– ‘jph’, resident of Hyperboria
Hyperboria is just like the internet that existed back in the 1980’s. And as a ‘new adopter’ of technology I’m excited at being in on the ground floor – not just to play with new technology, but also for the opportunities that I can see.
But I’ll talk more about opportunity later. Have a watch of this 3 minute video so you can understand a bit more about what Project Meshnet is all about and why it came about.
Opportunity
Project Meshnet and Hyperboria is in a similar position now to where ‘the internet’ was back in the 1980’s. It’s new, and there’s not many people using it. But it will grow.
And as it grows, there is opportunity for people to make money from services offered to ‘residents’ of Hyperboria.
Who knows, there could be a new Geocities for people to make their own web pages. (Please God, make it not true!)
There’s opportunity for early adopters like me to come into this world and set up some kind of service that people would be willing to pay for.
I’ll be exploring that as time goes by.
You have to build the road to Hyperboria
Project Meshnet and Hyperboria are accessible by installing CJDNS onto your computer, and you can only do it on Apple OS X or Linux variants like Ubuntu.
CJDNS is a network separate to DNS networking (which the normal internet is built upon). This means it’s a network that can never be discovered or monitored by those that use DNS monitoring (eg. everyone).
Once you’ve configured your computer to access the CJDNS network, you have access to Project Meshnet.
I did this, and followed all the relevant instructions.
And I was in.
Before me lay Hyperboria, the world that exists inside the Meshnet.
What you do in Hyperboria can never be detected by those who access the normal internet. It’s an entirely new world, accessible from the internet, but not part of the internet.
It’s like an alternate reality, existing in parallel with this one. And those outside of it can never find it, or see anything that’s going on inside of it.
The tools that you’re use to don’t exist in Hyperboria. There’s no Gmail, no Hotmail, no Google Search, no Facebook, no YouTube… There’s nothing there!
It’s exciting!
But just like the internet of the 1980’s, some people will build things to provide services or products to other users. There’s already a social network that’s been built for Hyperboria – it’s called Socialno.de (you can find me there as ‘alanzeyes’). There are people already building things for others to use.
Currently it’s all open source, it’s all free. But so was the internet of the 1980s and into the ’90s.
Freedom is waiting here for people to find. Freedom from oppression and censorship and monitoring.
It excites and inspires me!
A challenge for you
So here’s a challenge for you. If this discussion about Hyperboria interests you, maybe you can work out how to join me there. And say hi when you do. I’m ‘alanzeyes’.
It’ll be nice to see you there. If you can make it.
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