I was reading O'Reilly's What is Web 2.0 and I read this:
Quote:BitTorrent thus demonstrates a key Web 2.0 principle: the service automatically gets better the more people use it. While Akamai must add servers to improve service, every BitTorrent consumer brings his own resources to the party.
They're right to an extent, but there's something more to the equation - the very fact that users are the empowering force behind the network means that you're putting power into the wrong hands as well as the right ones. Take PageRank consultants as an example - the formal notion that a trusted user causes implicit improvements in page ranking is counterbalanced by the fact that there are experts whose entire business is focused on gaming the system. This is part of the reason why Google's searches turn up a lot of garbage, because the least honest/desirable players are the ones most willing to engage in this activity.
Similarly with Bittorrent and p2p in general, you get massive numbers of fake sharers that try to frustrate the normal service operation. They're not all that great at the moment, but it seems likely that, particularly with the legislative help they're getting in certain countries, they're going to get much better as time goes by. Malicious software is already a well-known meme; I have to wonder how many folks walk that idea up the chain and conclude that malicious content is eventually going to come to life as a strong presence.
Happily, the decentralized systems are, for now, relatively resilient against malicious users. But as Wikipedia's ongoing debate about editor credentials gives a good indication that the risks are slowly becoming commensurate with the rewards, and history indicates that that situation is something we should expect to worsen.
I'd like to be able to see where the next set of network memes are likely to come from - are we going to go to a trusted-circle version of Tor, where content is associated primarily to trusted entities? Maybe we'll just see a much stronger user-driven community, a la Wikia and other emerging user-driven search sites, with a market emerging for users to drive content ranking via digital payola. Maybe DMCA-type regulations are going to kill a lot of the infringement-heavy user-driven communities, and an upwelling of entirely original content will result. Maybe robotic overlords will by that time have destroyed us.
