Knowledge Sharing
Distributing knowledge and enabling people to access the knowledge from where it originates -- rather than waiting for centralized services to index or aggregate it -- is what one reader suggests can improve medical care by building a distributed database of the best known solutions to medical problems. Language professionals could also benefit from such a model that, once assembled, could serve as an entire dictionary for a given language.
With Internet-based distance education still in its infancy, P2P appears to offer some benefits that simply aren''t possible under a traditional, centralized model for teaching. As a masters student in developing distance education courses, I''m especially fond of this idea.
Advancing P2P
One reader has built a Web site that''s focused on P2P:
PeerProfits.com. The site includes the PeerProfits discussion group, news headlines and other links.
Research
United Devices is the one-stop shop for Internet users wishing to participate in distributed research initiatives ranging from curing diseases to modeling climate changes. Advancing research is conducted by breaking down large computing-intensive problems into small chunks that millions of desktops can work on during idle times. United Devices touts their software as the natural evolution of distributed processing (e.g. SETI@home) with distributed file sharing (e.g. Napster).
Distributed Caches
Suppose it''s possible to expose Internet browser requests to external browser caches to share a common, distributed cache of previously viewed Web content. If this feat could be accomplished securely and not violate personal privacy, I think he''s on to something! This idea may well be one solution to eliminating the World Wide Wait syndrome that we''re experiencing today.
Security and Reliability Issues
This leads us to the next group of readers who are concerned that P2P will be used to rapidly distribute all types of nasty security problems related to viruses and Trojan horse programs, so its uses should be limited to innocuous files such as MP3s.
Ironically, another reader wrote about how P2P is being used to solve security problems: myCIO.com is using P2P to instantaneously distribute virus protection on corporate desktop systems faster than viruses can propagate through e-mail. Visit the myCIO Web site for more information.
Reliability is another concern voiced by one reader who pointed out that locally run online stores must be available 24/7 with no room for downtime. Now, everyone will need to become seriously adept system administrators -- or risk going out of business.
Personally, I believe that security and reliability problems can be resolved using technology that''s freely available to day. I''m thinking that public key cryptography is behind the security solution. Can you think of any others that you''d like to share?
Miscellaneous
A variety of other ideas came in that did not seem to fit in any of the above categories. They included:
- Online dating
- P2P render farms to aid movie producers with complex image rendering, as PIXAR does today
- Distributed snippets of program source code on an intranet to standardize programming practices and eliminate re-inventing the wheel whenever a new problem appears
- Travel companion seeking and matching up people who need vehicles moved to long-distance destinations
- Virtual real-estate listings
- Arranging special-interest group excursions to cultural or historic sites
Thanks to your input, we''re seeing some great ideas that are certain to generate more great ideas, and the cycle begins anew. From all indications, P2P strikes a chord with lots of you out there, and leads me to wonder if you''d like to see more on the topic. I received several offers from readers for interviews and demonstrations of new and existing systems that apply P2P networking concepts. If you''d like to see some of these in upcoming EC Outlook articles, please let me know.
IE 7
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