[REBOL] Re: Morpheus - the bitter thruth?
From: jason:cunliffe:verizon at: 6-Mar-2002 9:13
> Just hope Carl or REBOL aren't thinking or planning any stupid proprietary
P2P system, Morpheous and others are already competing in the space with
varying degrees of success and failure, and Iam confident that the only way
any internet distribution system is going to succeed is by being based on
completely open protocols and not proprietary - the world wide web and email
are perfect examples of these.
> Anything else is backing a loser.
Not so fast.. anything which works and lets people do what they want easily
is not always a 'loser'...
The easiest way to have *secure* P2P is to develop some [obscure]
proprietary, non-published set of matching tools. End of story.
OpenSource is one of the great modern adventures in multi-cultural
collaboration. I love it, but it has its problems too. When you use xyz
electronic appliance [telephone, PC, HiFi, Bank ATM machine..
Airplane...etc] You don't particularly want or need to get inside those
subcompenents at a very low level. Ever since integrated circuits became the
norm, opensource electronics has been completely beyond most people's reach.
But what replaced it was a different higher-level order of open modularity..
and things accelerated wildly[somewhere around 1975 ?? ]
For P2P to really succeed, it needs a [globally] acceptable construct,
though it may in fact mostly be applied in many small groups and many
communities. We need not necessarily a language, but a language-like
approach - which lets people describe useful kinds of interaction, services
and situations. Something which can be applied and implemented regardless
of the underlying technology. Just as digital electronics enabled open
development though based on proprietary eveolving chip families.
Nobody really undertsands the P2P problem or application domains yet
anyway.. there's gonna have to be _lots_ of hands-on trial and error, both
technical and social. Rapid Prototyping and keen grasp of changing human
workflow patterns will be perhasp the most critical ingredients. Rebol is
well suited for its rapid prototyping, as is Python, FlashMX etc.
The military arena is probably the biggest customer. Again and again
communications are where accidents happen. Same story in WTC911.
If the military are the first to commission and specify new tech, the Sex
[+drugsnvice] industries are usually the first to appropriate new technology
[VHS, 900-lines, Minitel in France, pagers, web subscriptions,
streaming-Video-on-demand].
I can see lots of other social uses for P2P. But these are most likely to
make it happen first.
Longterm, I think the largest social change and benefits of P2P will be
Transportation and Medecine. I fear medicine will the last last to sanely
embrace P2P in America because is so !@#$-ed by insurance system.
Europe and Asia seem most likely. But then maybe this century will truly
surprise us, and Africa will be transformed.
./Jason
