The Vision of Pioneers

Fifty years ago, an engineer named Doug Engelbart gave a demo that introduced the world to the first personal computers and a vision to connect them: the Internet. The online technologies he revealed that day changed the lives of everyone on the planet — but Engelbart’s true vision was never achieved.

What he and the web’s pioneers wanted was a fully distributed Internet, one that each of us would power and for which we each took responsibility.

When AT&T first got a chance to build it, they said it was technically impossible. PiperNet is proof that they were wrong.

Powered by our second to none middle-out compression, PiperNet will reclaim the original vision of the Internet putting the power back where it belongs: with you, the user.

The First Personal Computer

Engelbart’s quest began with a simple goal: enabling computers to “augment” human intelligence. His dream was an ambitious one —predicated on miracle breakthroughs in nascent tech such as magnetic storage, efficient computation, and networking systems. He had to bet that computers could be manufactured more affordably. Most importantly, Engelbart gambled that a layman could understand the vast set of tools he developed.

He was right. He and the team at SRI leveraged these miracles to produce the first ever personal computer in 1969. Gone was any trace of the boxy, screenless, refrigerator-sized mainframe that was the computer of the day. In its place: a sleek, intuitive workstation replete with tools and systems such as the mouse, windows, hypertext, command input, and even a collaborative real time document editor.

The Internet Code

First, their Internet was decentralized, so that even users at the edges of the network could wield its full capability.

Second, it was neutral, meaning all nodes were on an equal playing field and their data couldn’t be discriminated against.

Third, nodes were interoperable, meaning there was nothing proprietary about how systems communicated.

Finally, the goal of the network was to give as much computing power to its users as possible.

As this code was put into practice it’s power created the most important tool in human history. The World Wide Web experienced unprecedented adoption rates — it took just 7 years for 25% of Americans to get online, compared to 26 years for television and 35 years for electricity.

Where We Went Wrong

Enter PiperNet

The Path to PiperNet

The Vision of Pioneers

The First Personal Computer

The Internet Code

Where We Went Wrong

Enter PiperNet