Peer-to-peer upstreamers

by ir. Jaap van Till

Introduction

There are more than 6 billion (6.000 million) people on this planet, of which more than 1.000 million are in China and more than 1.000 in India.
According to teledensity rollout-estimates we crossed in 2005 the total number of mobile phones at 2 billion and the total number of Internet users at 1 billion. And both numbers continue to grow. This is in contrast with the penetration numbers of TV sets and fixed telephone lines, which stagnate.
It is curious that older members of the world's leadership and regulatory affairs officials still very much think in terms of those telephones and TV sets when policies concerning telecom and media are discussed. Mobile phones have occasionally, but Internet usages have not really appeared on their political radar screens.
This blindness of some politicians and leaders is rather naive since the social, economic and political effects of Internet-usage and mobile phone usage are not te be overlooked. Not only because of the large user community but also because of the large amount of time many people spend each day online and mobile. This state of being actively connected is estimated at 30 % of the waking hours of some, but this may be even an underestimation.
In the Netherlands we estimate that on a population of 16 million, 150 million electronic network messages are exchanged between people (and with servers) each day in the form of mail messages, chat messages, web pages clicked, mobile phone calls and SMSes. And growing. This is obviously exerting effects not only on daily life of most of us but also on the community.
This essay tries to shed some light on what these effects may be and what the structural drivers behind these new movements are.
A bit beyond the usual hyped newsissues about the Net, like the alarming and attention grabbing misuses and threats: child-porno, terrorists and cybercriminals on internet and young religious fanatics confirming each other in cyberspace. And beyond the too narrow sights of those only interested how to make money quickly on the Net without any real knowledge about it.
The real question is: what is the next learning curve after the present “netocracy of media idols” wave?
For a possible answer I invite you to look closely at what the young (of mind) are doing right now.

Signals

A senior lady in intelligence once told me that if you want to recognize really significant movements in society you have to zoom in to those individuals that are like fish who dare to swim against the current in the river. Those that do not run with the other cows during a stampede. I can add a number of other telltale signals to that which usually attract my attention when I notice them: When one or more of these signals appear I know that something significant is manifesting itself.
I can inform you that from recent signals on my antennas I do not see a stubborn innovative little fish, but a whole school of whales that swim through our network waters, still unseen by most. They are, in this view on our society, not only huge but also they communicate with each other. In the quality of the communication between them lies their power. Their behavior is emergent and surprising.

Who are those whales and what are they doing?

Recognizable is the emergence of “Peer-to-Peer Culture”, with at its core the specific relational dynamic between people that is called ‘p2p’. That is the human way of organization, based on the use of communication networks and on voluntary participation of equal partners involved in the construction of shared resources and the solving of problems; without directly paying attention to financial compensation as a motivating factor, and not mutually organized according to hierarchical procedures of ‘command and control’.

Very visible and massive examples of p2p culture are the use of Skype pc-software to make phone calls (p2p) across the Internet; the p2p sharing of data-files with the help of Kazaa software or for example BitTorrent.
The dataflow of these activities is huge and growing. The moneyflow is not yet, although in their trail many companies recognize that combinations of the old established vertical media and these new level p2p ones are inevitable. This applies too for the upcoming p2p-TV.
It is significant to notice that p2p is not a fringe effect between a few ‘consumers’ or just experiments of a few nerdy teenagers in their upstairs room. In fact these guys and girls are changing whole industries overnight. Watch the young ‘Lords of the Links’ of Google for instance. The press reports about them are curiously enough talking about the advertising figures and -potential of Google and fail totally to register anything about the technical mechanisms and real drivers behind the success of Google and other p2p movements.

So what are these drivers?
P2P Culture is a massive cultural movement based on communication for cooperation through Internet. It is in my view the successor of the present wave of ‘Creative Class’ & ‘Netocracy’ Media Power, based on broadcasting of experiences and meme-events to consuming individuals.
In contrast to that, scientists have known for ages that they can learn very much by sending their new measurements and interpretations to their peers, who can respond with a useful comment or contribution of themselves. You get back more by giving something away which is not deminished: useful knowledge.
Scientists and knowledge workers also notify each other in their ‘network’ on useful articles and messages. Something in the range between: sharing of unverified gossip to exchanging help-actions that solve practical problems. They learn from each other that way!
Essential is that together with a suggested article or referral to ‘somebody who might help’ a recommendation is attached. With every message goes an explicit or implicit valuation and or rating. So P2P people ‘pay’ each other in the form of applicable knowledge or ‘credits’ in the form of credibility.

Mighty streams

People who cooperate and collaborate in this way locally or through Internet across time, distances and organizational boundaries do or don’t build up credibility and respect from peers if their messages contributions and referrals prove to be useful in practice. Like for instance in the p2p “Open Source” software development movement, of which the group behind “Firefox” is an example.
These activities are, at least not directly, related to making money, although what is done and built is very valuable. The process of p2p contributions and community-shared messages typically creates a “commons”. That is a virtuous circle situation, which grows by appreciation-tags is such a way that more value and appeal is added than taken out.
Other examples of such very non-tragic commons are: the MSN-cloud, the Skype community, Marktplaats.nl, eBay.com and Amazon.com.
In my opinion the mentioned mechanism of growth by p2p appreciation is why eBay did appreciate the builders of Skype with a couple of billion dollars.
The key is not the buying power of the Skype consumers (tired) but the activities and p2p contributions of the (wired)citizens of the Skype community.
Ebay value seekers can network with p2p appreciation talking Skypers.

In companies and value chains p2p activities are the basic stimuli of virtual organizations and business processes. Without them work would grind to a sudden halt.
Curiously enough you will find no formal traces of p2p communication on organization charts, budgets or activity plans. Controlaholic managers simply did not and will not notice p2p. That is their problem, not ours.
Inevitably web-based business-to-business (b2b) computer applications are appearing that function across fences of companies supported by cross-boundary p2p collaboration.
Bill Gates showed strong interest to play a central role in this new arena of developing web-based b2b systems.
Also, Google and Yahoo are moving in the direction of wanting to play an active role in p2p-Telecommunications which is a bigger market than ‘content’.

My impression is that the p2p movement is a significant wave in the qualitive as well as the quantitative sense.
From measurements performed by Johan Pouwelse and his team from Delft University it follows that the traffic created by the use of BitTorrent already is exceeding 30% of the total bitstream of Internet. And it grows relatively to other types of Internet traffic, not to mention podcasting, blogging and vlogging which originate from p2p culture as well.

King of Swing

With respect to cultural signals and images p2p is a genuine wave like I have seen to come and pass a couple of times in my lifetime.
It may sound very pass_ now but when I heard it for the first time in 1955 it was exciting, nearly magical and wonderfully strange at the same time. The thundering beat of the orkestra of ‘king of swing’ Benny Goodman at the Carnegie Hall concert (1938). In the dark listening to the jazz programs of Willis Conover (VOA/ AFN station in Germany) in my bed with a headset connected to a self made christaldiode-radioreceiver. With long wires hung in the trees.
My parents did not understand this technology. That strange jazz music was officially considered harmful, just like comic books. Some parents referred to the swing music as “coming from the jungle” and “spoiling the mores of the young”. Those young did however dance and jive ‘en masse’, shouting with pleasure at parties on this music, totally disregarding these square-parental warnings.

Another liberation wave came with the records of the Beatles. Also wonderfully creative and strange when you heard them for the first time on your transistor-radio. Magic.
The third wave came with the personal powertool of the PC. Computer-Lib and Dream Machine! I remember how proud we were at the meetings of the Hobby Computer Club (HCC) to show dazzled friends how we could tame large boxes of electronics and let early AppleII’s do tricks on screens. And later connect with other nerds the world over with FidoNet p2p email.
Also then bottom-up acceptance and fears & disbelief of old farts that was disobeyed and neglected. _

The fourth liberation wave began not long ago but nevertheless many can not even imagine to live without Email and The Web, so embedded is Internet in our daily life and work. And there have been warnings _(mostly from non-wired not yet retired persons), ever since we began with dial-up modems, FidoNet and UUCP, against the harmful effects of Internet, like porno, racial hate sites, viruses and the digital divide.
People who live on Internet and the talented Creative Class, producing digital media-content, are the inhabitants of this fourth wave, who freed themselves of the restrictions of time and distance. What binds them together is attention (memes for eyeballs) and shared interests.
Now we are in the middle of the mobile and multi-user gamebox explosion, the fifth wave. There are now more cellphone handsets in my country than there are inhabitants. Small kids get a GSM phone from both separated parents, to keep track of where they are. Without any blockade of fence, national boundary or mental model kids can cooperate, play and live in more than one tribe at the same time.

The sixth wave

Unstoppable the sixth liberation wave is coming up now on a massive scale. P2P cooperation without the obstacles of scarcity of bandwidth or scarcity of ether-frequencies.
Of course it is absolutely wrong to download through Internet without paying music and films that are protected by intellectual property rights.
In a number of countries sharp rules prohibiting that and punishing it have been announced. Nevertheless I am under the impression that old and new cultures are colliding here.
For p2p sharing new ethics, rules of conduct and laws are under construction. The new p2p culture can not be stopped and its inhabitants have other motives than just stealing.
The first printing presses of which most were located in the liberated Lower Countries, basis for many present day content and IPR companies, where themselves fought by the Catholic Church who tried to stop them breaking its monopoly on book replication (by hand) and publishing.

The p2p relational dynamics are a crucial issue because from these not very well understood dynamics the power of millions of users is exercised through the use of Internet. Yes this will exert political power too. In the social sphere of the civil communities but in economics and politics too.
The Belgian professor Michel Bauwens is writing an ever growing (by p2p contribution) essay about the P2P culture and its effects.
Highly recommended: page about P2P essay!
The central message is that not only governments and companies exert power but also 'networked communities of civilians-prosumers', which is the third pole on the Trias Telematica.

The social relevance of this undercurrent, based on p2p network use is demonstrated by increased internal social cohesion AND richness in diversity AND a more open external attitude of groups of p2p participants.
That means that the groups are not sectarian although members seek confirmation of ‘things that work’ and to continue to learn.
Examples of such p2p social dynamics at work with demonstrable knowledge sharing and appreciation were and are: the Solidarnosc Movement, Charta, the fall of the Soviet Union, Animal Lib, the powershift in the Ukraine, SETI, the WikiPedia movement, Open Source, the populist mourning display at the funeral of Princess Diana and at the funeral of the Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn, spontaneous demand bundling projects for optic fiber and WiFi access networks, health-patient discussion forums where participants learn together about their own illness and treatment, the IETF workgroups driving the process of improvement of Internet protocols and architecture, the anti-Syria demonstrations in the Lebanon, the missing persons lists on Internet after the 9/11 attack, smartmobs, most succesful innovations, the Zapatist movement, the IEEE, the Banlieu rebellion, etc. Voluntary, spontaneously and bottom-up. Good and bad.

All of these examples exhibit suddenly visible effects of undercurrents fed by p2p dynamics.
Emergent behaviour as it develops in ant hills from the massive amount of interactions between ants using only seven different smell signals. And the communication is usually transparent, aggregated and visible for all participants. Therefore central leadership and ‘command & control’ is less needed or less important. It can operate crossing large distances which will make our planet a Flat Earth where everything and everybody is just nearby.
The Internet itself is organized in this p2p way although not everybody knows or appreciates this.

I forecast that many more examples of groups of networking civilians will appear that are not only downloading music and films but also will act as constructive and responsible cooperating p2p “upstreamers”.

Join in, then we will swim together upstream on the digital canals and rivers. _

Version: Januari 2 2006

[This essay appeared in a more brief format on November 25, 2005 at http://www.netkwesties.nl/editie136/column1.html _ (in the Dutch language)]