Higher Intellect Vintage Wiki:About


About preterhuman.net

The Higher Intellect project, or more commonly referred to as preterhuman.net, is one of the larger freely accessible collections of text files and books. The archive consists of over 750,000 files with various origins across the Internet. The more notable sources for the archive include textfiles.com and archive.org. The Higher Intellect project is entirely non-profit and is funded only by donations from its users and administrators.


Current Statistics

The current file count for the Higher Intellect project is 857,341 using approximately 157 gigabytes of disk space. The collection is served to the public using the world wide web as well as the KDX and Hotline Communications protocols. The Higher Intellect project also hosts approximately 300 gigabytes of rare and outdated operating systems and software including versions of A/UX, IRIX, AIX, RISC OS, SunOS, BeOS, OS/2, OPENSTEP, NeXTStep, AmigaOS, and several variations of UNIX and BSD.


Time Line

The Higher Intellect project was created in 2001 by Paul Lezica in Calgary AB, Canada. The project was first launched on a Compaq ProLiant 5500 with only 20gb disk space, using connectivity from Shaw Communications and Telus. In early 2002, the servers were re-located to Kelowna BC, Canada. During the period of 2003-2005, the servers were upgraded to allow for more capacity and better handling of the increasing demand and popularity. Between late 2005 and early 2006, the project suffered numerous server hardware failures and was forced to re-design the network plan.

The Higher Intellect project began with fewer than 10,000 text files obtained from a Hotline server named Fodder's Land between 1999-2000. The original cluster of servers consisted of a few 486's and low end Pentiums on a 3COM 10Mbit switching network. The large growth of the collection began between 2004-2006 with the acquisition of several large archives.

Project Goal

The Higher Intellect project was created with the vision of information freedom in mind. With the fast paced evolution of the Internet, it is important to archive relevant information which would otherwise be forgotten in cyberspace. This is also a battle against censorship, of which the geographical location of the servers themselves provide an advantage. The Higher Intellect project has no bias as to the nature of its archive contents. As such, the archive continues to accumulate texts on any imaginable subject. The goal of the project is to never stop.