Two people liked Hyperdata. One wrote:

You mentioned that it reminded someone of hypertext, but I actually view that as a positive, it evokes a similar paradigm shift. Hyperdata sounds like the fulfillment of data, transcendence into the next form. It's a very simple and clear description of crypto/distributed ledger tech.

You and another have a more negative reaction. His interpretation of hyper meaning only faster. So he didn’t perceive that hyperdata would convey any concept of decentralization.

I immediately thought of hypertext.

Expected reaction amongst some demographics.

I presume you know that hypertext are the links between (and even within) documents that we have on the world wide web (i.e. in browser)?

So then is hyperdata undifferentiated from hypertext to you? Did you have no curiosity to understand what would be interesting or different about hyperdata compared to hypertext?

I don't know, there's something about it that appears reminiscent of the nineties somehow

Well you ostensibly represent a demographic in between someone (such as myself) who knows that Tim Berners-Lee (TBL) didn’t create the concept of the Semantic Web for “Web 3.0” until roughly at the turn of the century, and someone (such as my gf in the Philippines) who has no idea that the hypertext concept predated the invention of the web browser by TBL in the 1990s. So you know enough to think that anything related to hypertext is dated from the birth of the Internet, but not detailed enough to know that hyperdata was a more recent concept that has not been entirely implemented. In fact, TBL now is pushing his SOLID platform and technology to decentralize the control of data on the Internet.¹

Perhaps many millennials would not remember Hypercard from Apple and the birth of the WWW in the 1990s. Especially not most Asians because most of them didn’t have much exposure to the Internet until after the turn of the century. My gf tells me she learned the word hypertext sometime in her high school days but she didn’t have a precise understanding of what it means. She was thinking it had something to do with any text on a computing device.

I agree that many reasonably tech aware Anglo Westerners above age 35 are less likely to find the term hypertext novel. But would they associate hyperdata as being essentially the same as hypertext?

If we could think of a similarly appropriate name of the technology that is less rehashed, I would be happy for it. Just haven’t been able to think of anything yet that isn’t lost in a sea of social media names.

I'm not saying I dislike it, but I'm wondering if it has the potential of a wider appeal beyond those with a more technical appreciation.

Data is very important to Millennials. Why would they not care about their data? Their music, their photos, their freedom to wisecrack in a permissionless environment (e.g. 4chan), etc.

Yet I get the point that hyperdata may not convey a need they perceive they have.

OK, I'll put my own head above the parapet now and suggest this one: Immute.

That’s interesting. I probably did think of that idea before in past naming brainstorms. So many of my past ideas I have not shared such as yesterday unearthodox and datapult. I have also thought about the archive being indelible and perennial. Immute also seems to imply lack of censorship in that one can’t be muted.

But the problem this seems to sell capabilities which nobody yet knows they need and want.

Instead I think we really need to sell that decentralization enables a proliferation of features and ways of interacting with data because there’s not an Internet behemoth controlling your data and controlling which apps can interact with your data. This is what TBL is hoping¹ to accomplish with SOLID.

So the freedom of the data is the critical concept, yet moreover the benefits that stem from that freedom. Perhaps open data is still the best name?

Terms such as ‘nexus’, ‘synergy’, and ‘meshing’ of gears come to mind (source of the original Hypermesh name idea).

Hyper- means over; beyond; above; exceeding.

Some brainstorming ideas:

• kilter - balance, or a state of working well
• myriad - countless or very many elements or aspects
• razzmatazz
• unbound - not tied up (old name idea of mine which others had rejected)
• unbundled
• extricable
• chaos or kaios
• discrete - individually separate and distinct
• thin layer - so thin it’s not interfering
• wok - a mix and mash cooking pot

Conceptually perhaps the idyllic name among all of those ideas is: Discrete. Abstractly direct to point of everyone’s data and actions being separable and not beholden to a corporation. Unfortunately it’s a math term many people don’t know, and many people confuse it with discreet. And most people don’t contemplate an abstract conceptual relevance.

Perhaps comprehensible to more people is : Thinhub. But thin doesn’t likely convey in the minds of the user that hub is decentralized. Doesn’t quite achieve the intending meaning. Perhaps Thinweb or Thindata are better. But thin may be taken negatively as meaning shallow (i.e. not deep).

They key concept I would like to convey is the disruption of the middle-man corporation parasite that enslaves data (and aggregating it selling to the highest bidder). The term thin (discarding the excess baggage of Fat protocols) almost captures this concept but also has then negative connotations of being shallow, sparse, or feeble.

Another way of capturing the conceptual distinction of thin protocols (and thus decentralization) is that they’re tokenized ledger protocols. So how about Tokenized?

Here’s an creative transfiguration of amok: Awok. But doesn’t quite convey any meaning. Seems to fit a military game. Datawok isn’t compelling to me.

I don’t like any of those, except maybe Tokenized. That’s an example of the brainstorming I go through but still don’t arrive at a better name.

A new prefix comes to mind: exo. Meaning originating from the outside. Which is precisely the concept of decentralization. Finally I thought of a word that precisely conveys decentralization even if many people don’t know for example exosphere, exoskeleton, exogenesis and exogeny.

How about Exos? Lol, we all know about the EOS project fiasco.

Domain exos.org appears to not be in use. And there are several exos domain names available, including exos.cc and exos.to.

But that doesn’t really convey what it is. Lacks a description of purpose.

Perhaps Exobase? Doesn’t really grab me. Exo seems to associate with life sciences.

Feedback thus far is that tokenize(d) reminds people of pay-per-use, so that’s probably not good.

Hyperdata sounds serious and professional, but the connection to a blockchain/crypto project is not clear (yet is that connection necessary?). Users may think it means for example excessive data or fast data.

Another idea which I may have expressed in the past which reoccurs to me now is: Slick. I doubt that most users would relate it to their data being not able to get stuck. I was actually thinking of teflon. We rejected this in the past because it didn’t clearly connect to a concept which is strongly unique.

I was thinking about liberator and this lead me to the idea: Keeper. My initial reaction is I like it. Even the ladies here at my house said they thought it means it keeps all your things (safe) for you. But for laughs, you must visit keeper.com. The .org/.net are offered for sale though for $5k / $33k. An alternative is Keepeer for which the .com is offered for sale for $2200. There’s also keepers.net offered for $2500. Another alternative is Keepr. And finally one more alternative (rhymes with Kangeroo) is: Keeperoo. The domains keeper.ooo and keeperoo.com are available for registration.

Tangentially note domains I had registered in the past which have expired and are in grace period include ourz.org, ournet.me, welog.co, gether.us, omnific.me, eclectic.fun, peerfect.co, indienet.co, uncensored.wiki, indienet.us, hmesh.us, and urnet.org. If any of these are desirable, we need to make a decision to renew them now.

¹ _{The problem with TLB’s plan is that it lacks a consensus ledger, an IPFS-like data layer, and the key economic benefit of Thin Protocols (note that links to a future blog I will write soon but doesn’t yet exist at the time of writing this, but for now you can refer this comment instead).}