Belongs to market "BCC-BCN 2008: 3, 4 y 5 de abril 2008

Web 2.0 versus P2P. Cómo construimos un modo alternativo de produción y propriedad

When we use our computers and digital networks to send information it seems to go instantaneously from the sender to the receiver, so frequently we do not think about the path it takes, or the political and economic implications of the path is.

Networked communications, from the late 70s to the early 90s, for most people meant being a paying customer of an “online service,” the most prominent of these was CompuServ. Using such as service meant that CompuServ, a private company, had full control of your communication,
including who you could communicate with, and what you could communicate. It also meant that they where the sole provider of access, there could be no independent providers, only competitive systems from other private companies.

The first round of this exercise will simulate this era of on line communications, and illustrate how control is made possible by the centralized path of communications.
Meanwhile, in the sheltered back rooms of military, telecommuncations and educational research, The Internet was evolving far way from the imagination of capitalist finance.

By design, the Internet is a peer to peer network, meaning that any computer can send data to any other computer connected to it, so unlike being a client connected to the servers of a monolithic “online service” like CompuServ, each computer connect is a part of the network and can connect other computers, and therefore users. This mean that companies and volunteer organizations could become service providers and so, many did. A cottage industry of commercial internet service providers sprang up world wide, along with nonprofit “FreeNets” and public and private “Internet Cafes.” The boom of the media, more democratic than any other previous media, let to wide spread speculation of this being a revolution that would have deep and broad implications.

The next round of exercise simulates a peer to peer network, where any person can send a message to any other person without having to go through any particular node, and how this makes control more difficult.
After the heady days of “dotCom” boom and bust, a new buzzword came to town: “Web 2.0,” it promises new ways for users to share and communicate online and a new user-driven breed of websites.

However, while sharing and communicating where new for websites, as we have seen they where already existing on the Internet, “the Web,” while operating on the peer to peer Internet, is actually a client-server system, with the same asymmetric relationships as the CompuServ era’s online services, the user has a browser which communicates with the site, each site is a monolithic application that controls the interaction of all it’s users.
In the third round of the exercise we will see how the interaction of money into the model works against the peer to peer aspects and helps bring back control and centralization.