From my friend and shooting buddy Jason, who isn’t cool enough to blog yet, I get this news item that the Principality of Sealand, an old World War II offshore artillery platform off the coast of Britain, is up for sale by the owner. A few years back the geek community was abuzz over a tech venture that set up a computer data center on the platform for use as a “data haven”. I’ve met some of the people involved with this venture, and Jason has the distinction of once beating Prince Michael at Hydro Thunder. The world would indeed be a poorer place without wealthy British eccentrics.
If you’ve ever wanted to own your own country, now is the chance.
Here is a Wired Magazine article about Sealand and the principals behind not only the “island” itself, but HavenCo as well.
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.07/haven.html
Neal Stephenson based his excellent 1999 book Cryptonomicon on the idea of setting up a data haven in a far-off land, free from The State’s grubby little fingers. In more recent interviews, Stephenson has admitted that it was a failed prediction. The idea of a monolithic data haven has been made moot by a more distributed system featuring thumb drives, iPods, cell phones, and PDAs.