The Interpeer Project was born out of a critical perspective of the contemporary state of human-computer interaction and the Internet.
Computers have become ubiquitous. However, the most popular protocol connecting users to remote machines, HTTP, follows an obsolete philosophy: our actions do not need to be arbitrated by third party machines, and often our data does not need to traverse them.
We need an Internet that fits contemporary usage patterns.
- An Internet where people own their data (often called digital sovereignty) and can share it between devices and contacts without the need for intermediaries.
- Where cryptography allows users to securely delegate trust to any number of devices, even those they don’t know directly.
- A information-centric networking-like technology that enables trust delegated machines to share data directly and efficiently.
- An internet which thus aims for decolonisation.
The Interpeer Project was started to address these topics, with the goal of helping build a human-centric internet.
We use the term “human-centric” to oppose that which is not focused on serving people.
This is, for example, market-driven data-harvesting. It is tech that violates human rights, perhaps simply by not addressing such concerns.
But it also acknowledges the human experience as a small part of the environment in which it unfolds. “Human-centric” also means opposing wasteful computing practices that destroy our environment.
Research and development with public funds means we produce open source code as well as openly accessible specifications.
If there are relevant studies or other results we produce, we pledge to also publish them in a freely accessible manner.