On Thu, 2009-10-15 at 12:17 -0700, Brad Fitzpatrick wrote: > Why does there need to be a hub of hubs?
There doesn't but there are economic pressures in that direction. It's the same problem that Usenet encountered with Google: In the early days of Usenet "everyone" on the net and the UUCP peering system was using some time-sharing system with dedicated admins. The marginal cost of maintaining a P2P network of NNTP servers was low. The value to net-news "consumers" of a centralized hub was low. As things converged onto the Internet and so-called "don't be evil" Google got a handle, Usenet got pretty wiped out by the centralized Google Groups: zero marginal cost to most users and a fancy convenient interface. In a kind of Devil's Bargain, Usenet became a kind of parody of its former self. PSHB is darn close to a modern re-do of Usenet and I think it will be hard to avoid a similar fate. Educating consumers, tedious though it may be, seems to me essential to avoid de facto centralization. -t
