Think Web2.0 Deeper

博客之P2P

很好的一种解释,Web2.0的扁平化趋势将会克隆整个Web的精神到每一个个体，Web世界正在走向类"分形"的结构。

1. 最早是商业P2P, 然后是文件传播的P2P， 现在是信息的P2P，当前典型代表是博客之P2P。
2. 每个博客既是受众，同时也是传播者。博客世界的草根，就是那个"P"，博客的影响力就是带宽。体系上，每个博客都可以是一个备受关注的服务器。当然，这只是体系上的，事实上还是两极世界。
3. Blogosphere的Feed，是想跑都跑不掉的种子。比特流世界的P2P体系中最稀缺的种子来源，在博客世界里却很丰富。但是丰富的背后却意味着信息的冗余和复杂，搜索工作还需大量的工作要做。
4. 人的潜力非常之大，在适合的机会和土壤之下，就会迸发出巨大的能量。互联网无疑是土壤，但这机会嘛，有时是水到渠成，有时则要半推半就。博客就是一个机会，它结合了平台与传播。
6. 随着博客和Web 2.0对信息发布、信息交流和双向定制和甄选的变革，信息流P2P的基本框架已经初具规模。
7. 如果有人现在做个试验，就向60年代六度理论的奠基实验那样，不过把实验的方式从传统的邮寄传递，变成在网上进行一封Email的传递，选择多样化的传递起点，每次传递时都加上一个传递者的名字，最后来计算网络人与人之间的连接跨度，相信一定是个极为有趣的实验。而从博客上事件流的P2P传递，是不是可以用来衡量这方世界的广度？
8. 信息传递的P2P的趋势，将会使互联人之间的跨度继续递减，传递成本递减，速度递增，应用递增。
9. 博客P2P系统是Blogosphere博客世界的子集，是一个松散关联，高速传递的"自动机"。既带有高度的随机性，又具有高度的聚合性。
10. 博客P2P是一个自然演化的系统，Blogroll，TrackBack，以及被发言光大了的传统超链接等等都是传送工具，但还不够，远远不够。比特流的P2P机会很多，因为很多人同是贡献着；博客世界信息流的机会更多，因为我们距离每个人都来贡献的目标――还远。

其实这种理解下面的高手已经作了总结，breakdown me!
我们不仅仅停留在缩短距离，提高效率的层面，其实我们已经在为人类社会的发展敲着战鼓。
refer: http://www.cultureby.com/trilogy/2005/12/internet_20_the.html

Consider them a kind of telescope. Those who buy model 3, probably also buy models 2 and 1. Those who buy 2, probably also buy 1 (but not 3). Those who buy model 1 only buy model 1. I make no claims for the veracity or the utility of these models. But writing them out helped return my pulse almost to normal.Model one: disintermediation

The Internet is an efficiency machine. It removes the friction that stands between buyers and sellers. Now Dell can sell directly, from factories to consumers. Now Amazon can disintermediate the bookstore and someday the publisher. We are on the verge of being able to tell how much of the marketplace was about the accidents, not the essentials, of supply and demand. Markets will verge on maximal efficiency.

In this model, the revolution runs deep but its structural effects are limited. Really, we live in the same old world. It's just that certain pieces have been taken out. Hey, we didn't need them anyhow. The world is merely more compact, more elegant. And that's a good thing.

Model two: long tail

The Internet is a profusion machine. It allows small cultural producers to find small cultural consumers, and as a result, all hell is breaking lose. Chris Anderson's long tail model (and my own plenitude model) says that the tiny acts of innovation, rebellion and refusal that used to die in obscurity can now, some of them, find just enough fellow travellers to sustain themselves. As a result, the gravitational power of the center is being made to creak like the mast of an 18th century man of war in a perfect storm. It might hold...or maybe this is the moment to throw ourselves overboard.

I recently had dinner with a journalist who belongs to the upper reaches of the newspaper elite. Casually, ever so casually, she let slip that the great newspapers may not exist five years from now. This is a very good way to get an anthropologist's attention and make his head spin. I had to leave the table. My paper bag was in the cloak room.

In effect, the long tail model is an efficiency model too. It says that now that people can reach one another, they will reach one another. The costs of access, the friction created by the media, has dropped to almost nothing. But this model goes vastly beyond the efficiency model. It says that the structural effects of the Internet 2.0 will not be merely a matter of making the economy more efficient. There will also be social consequences large and small. The world will ramify. Elites will fall. Diversity will flourish. The fundamentals of association and government will transform. In short, the very nature of the social beast will change.

This is not a disintermediated world with "bits taken out." This is the world less hierarchical and more heterogeneous, a whole with more, and more various, parts now wired and networked in new ways.

Model three: reformation

The Internet is a reformation machine. It will create new fundamentals of and for our world. It change the units of analysis and the relationships between them. This reformation model says, in other words, that the coming changes will deeply cultural...and not merely social (model 2) and economic (model 1).

I noticed this doing research in Korea. Teens and college students were creating new networks with webpages (the local equivalent of MySpace) and and the clouds of photos and messages they were sending one another. I assumed that this was Model 2 stuff, a change in fundamentals of interaction, until they began to talk about themselves in new ways.

It became clear eventually that these people were reforming personhood and the self. The self was not merely better connected, but now more porous, more distributed, more cloud like. This cultural fundamental, the definition of what and who a person is, was changing. (In the Attiyeh interview, Weinberger talks about buddy lists in the West and what he calls the "continuous presence" of friends.)

When I listen to Clay Shirkey (pictured) talk about categories of knowledge and the tags by which it is organized, I begin to wonder, as he does more brilliantly than I could hope to, whether we are looking at new ideas of the idea. This too is a good way to get the anthropologist's attention. If there is something my tribe cares about, it is culture and the way in which culture defines knowledge of and in the world. To think that this is now "under construction" is quite enough to make me reach for a paper bag and my best hyperventilation cessation technique. Just give me a minute. No, really, I'll be fine.

The reformation model says fundamental categories of our culture (particularly the self and the group and the terms with which we think about them) are changing. We are now down to what is sometimes called the DNA level of things. This isn't actually a great metaphor for anthropological purposes, but the phrase is a tag, so you know what I mean. Model 3 is not about faster markets or new networks. This is a change in the basic terms of reference, the very internal blue print with which we understand and construct the world.

Model four: continuous presense (everything and everyone all the time)

One way to assess innovations is to make a guess about where we are headed. I think our economic, social and cultural destination might be this: we will be continuously connected to all knowledge and all people with a minimum of friction, and priviledge will be measured, in part, by how good are the filters with which we make contact with all but only the people and knowledge we care about. One of these filters will, I hope, be a "pattern recognition" system that detects the fundamental changes set in train by models 1, 2 and 3 so that we can have a little early warning. Because, frankly, you know, I've just about had it.

SeeSunshine