Project Loon is a project of Google to bring Internet access to the whole world. Those of us who have it, don’t appreciate the fact that the majority of the world’s population still does not have the Internet. It is really science fiction at its best, with Google engineers sending balloons up into the stratosphere, where at 20 km above the earth, they float and go around the globe in winds while communicating back with earth.

This essentially allows them to be a network in the sky and will allow, as more of these balloons go up, people in deserted areas who do not have Internet, to be able to access the Internet. The project began in June 2013 above New Zealand’s South Island. Once they have gone through this pilot testing, they are going to take it to other places, apparently including South Africa, and so people will be able to access Internet in areas where people have not been able to before – out in rural areas, up mountains etc. You can imagine what this will do for tyrannical governments who may not be able to control which Internet sites their people see in the future given that they may not have control over the internet providers.