> A quick note - the decentralized system that is being proposed is NOT peer > to peer. At the top, at the aggregator, it functions just the same as the > centralized solution: One database, searchable and acessable by all - ie > napster. >
Think I got it; so the "aggregator" functions like the news feeds(?) except it's remotely querying databases, periodically (or on the fly -pushed?-), > The difference is how the metada gets to the central DB. Either it is > aggregated from nodes, or required to be centrally submitted to bypass the > technical hurdles of aggregation. > The "killer app" aspect, then, is the automation of data directory centralization as opposed to relying on participants to visit and update the central site manually(?) > I am under the impression that feasability or technical-hard-ness of > building the metadata collection functionality to be decentralized rather > than requiring it to be centrally submitted does not nearly outweigh the > problems with admining, maintaining, and hosting the central solution. > Given the above clarification, it sounds more do-able if the node admins can be "educated".. > When i get home i will be rifling through some books for quotes to support > my claim that Reed's Law and End-to-End principals support the > decentraralized design over the centralized design. > Interestingly, reed gave a presentation where he illustrated his "law" (I've got a semantic bone to pick with that term as applied to "theories" * < strict definitional sense*, but I digress..) using the example of online auctions: "But the theory is less important than the practice, at least if you're trying to profit from the Internet, so I'll make some predictions based on the likely effects of the Group-Forming Law in 2002: The obvious conclusion is that whoever forms the biggest, most robust communities will win. But the Group-Forming idea can be used to look well beyond the obvious and discriminate among strategies that are all billed as building communities. For instance, Internet auction pioneer Onsale, which buys closeout products and auctions them on its Web site, will see its value rise only in proportion to the number of users. On-line classifieds, which connect buyers to sellers on a peer-to-peer basis, should see a stronger, Metcalfe effect. Ebay, which began as one person's attempt to establish a market for Pez candy dispensers, should get an even more powerful Group-Forming effect because it helps members act in groups as they auction off and bid for products on-line. (Other economics work in favor of Ebay, too. Because the Group-Forming effect will give it enormous volumes of business, it can charge a lower commission on sales. The low fees will attract more users and produce a virtuous circle. Also, because it's Ebay's customers who do the selling, Ebay doesn't face any inventory or product-development issues.)" Notice he touts EBay as an example; a centralized system. But it doesn't necessarily follow that a thriving Group-Forming online communty can't be fostered via a distibuted network. Jon Udell apprently thinks just the opposite in evaluting the future of Radio Userland: "Both approaches are valid, but there is a middle ground -- more coherent than email, less isolated than Groove -- that needs to be occupied. Radio doesn't yet know how to occupy that middle ground. But it has the tools people need to do the experiment: a distributed scripting engine and object database, Web-services protocols. When Radio's currently-centralized community engine itself becomes distributable (as is planned), I expect to see an explosion of group-forming activity. The spaces thus constituted will express different sets of values, but they'll federate in the way that Reed's Law predicts." see: http://www.xml.com/pub/a/ws/2002/03/01/udell.html
