Peer-To-Peer: Harnessing the Power of Disruptive Technologies

by Andy Oram

Alternative Cover to ISBN13: 9780596001100

Genres: Computer Science, History

432 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2001

Reviews

[Dave Peticolas · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a collection of articles by technologists and thinkers in the "Peer to Peer" movement. This book was published at the height of the peer-to-peer buzz and introduces many of the projects and technologies that comprise (or comprised) peer-to-peer. There are articles about specific projects like SETI@home, Jabber, Gnutella, Freenet, Groove, and many others. There are also articles about concepts that are import in peer-to-peer like metadata, privacy, trust, performance, and reputation.

The articles are primarily technical, making this book feel something like a conference proceedings. Also, much of the book's emphasis is on wide-scale, anonymous publishing and file-sharing, with little treatment of small-group collaboration. Also, in the passage of time since this book was published, several of the represented projects and companies have become defunct. Nevertheless, this is a very good introduction to peer-to-peer.

[Gabriel Chartier · Rating 3 out of 5]

The most interesting part about this book (written in 2001) to me is how it all amounted to (kind of) nothing. It makes me sad to see how close we were to creating the foundations for a better web that had decentralization baked into it. So many of the things I see being talked about today in the web3 space, specifically in DAOs, are just now catching up to some of these essays. Where did we go wrong?

First section had some good insights about p2p that still hold up today and it was fascinating to read the excitement of the future of p2p hot off the tail of Napster.

Skimmed the second section because, while it was interesting, it was a bit too outdated and technical.

Third section had some great topics that are important for conversations happening now in web3: Trust, Accountability, Reputation, Security, Interoperability.

It's been over 20 years since this book came out and we're still having these conversations. Will it take another 20 years to implement a web that isn't morally bankrupt? Fuck if I know

[Gabe · Rating 2 out of 5]

Doesn't mention bittorrent at all... so that's a huge hit right there.

The other technologies are interesting but are not as prevalent.