Читать книгу Sharing Economy and Big Data Analytics - Soraya Sedkaoui - Страница 28

Unlike web 1.0, web 2.0 is a platform that provides more opportunities for disseminating and sharing information. The consumer is no longer just a passive consumer, but becomes active and participates in the “making” of information.

The tremendous expansion of the social web is embodied in peer-to-peer (P2P) technology, with the initial sharing of media, music and video files. The proper meaning of the word peer-to-peer is “node-to-node”. In this process, the interconnected nodes share resources with each other without using a centralized administrative system. In other words, each node of the computer network is both client and server, unlike the old client-server model.

Figure 1.1. P2P diagram (Evroux et al. 2014). For a color version of this figure, see www.iste.co.uk/sedkaoui/economy.zip

The success of the P2P system as a social phenomenon has important economic (rights and taxes) and moral (knowledge exchange) consequences. It allows efficiency in the use of networks and economic performance (reduction of infrastructure costs and exploitation of the high inactive potential at the edge of the Internet (Benoît-Moreau 2006)).

The P2P network was mainly known under the Napster² brand. In this application, the P2P network concept was used to share media files, in other words, the exchange of compressed MPEG Layer3 (mp3) audio files. However, P2P is not only about file sharing, it is also about establishing multimedia, video, document and cryptography communication networks based on resource sharing (Schollmeier 2001).

Since its invention, P2P technology has been defined in several ways by computer theorists and professionals. Michel Bauwens³ describes P2P as “a form of network-based organization, based on the free participation of equipotent partners engaged in the production and use of common resources”.

Peer-to-peer does not use financial compensation as the main motivation, and it does not use traditional command and control methods:

It creates something common rather than a market or a state, and relies on social relationships to allocate resources, rather than a price mechanism or hierarchical system. (Evroux et al. 2014)

Bauwens’ definition considers the P2P system as a non-profit social organization, its only ambition is to share data between individuals, whether they are producers or users. It follows a protocol created by society and for society, without there being a system of supervision, and it tries to moralize the use of technology.

The Intel Working Group defines P2P as “the sharing of IT resources and services through direct exchange between systems”. Alex Weytsel of the Aberdeen Group considers P2P to be “the use of devices on the outskirts of the Internet without the customer’s ability”.

Ross Lee Graham identifies P2P according to three main requirements: possession of a server-quality operational computer, registration at an independent address, and the ability to cope with flexible connectivity (Milojicic et al. 2002).

Clay Shirky of O’Reilly and Associates is based on the following definition:

P2P is a class of applications that takes advantage of the resources – storage, cycles, content, human presence – available on Internet devices. (Evroux et al. 2014)

In this case, Shirky summarized the main operational elements of P2P into three concepts (Koulouris 2010) in 2001:

 – Presence: this includes the ability to say when a resource is online. Determining the presence of a resource is necessary for P2P networks, as the permanent availability of resources is not guaranteed. Once a user or resource’s online presence is established, any number of highly personalized services can be offered. Presence is essential for the creation of user-centric systems, such as instant messaging.

 – Identity: P2P networks must be able to uniquely identify available resources. The identification systems that were used were not suitable for machines permanently connected to the Internet and users without a stable IP address (see Box 1.2) could not be recognized or identified. Thus, P2P technology solves this problem by using its own naming system.

 – P2P networks make it possible to use the resources available at the “limits” of the Internet: processing power, storage, content, human presence. This is in contrast to current client/server services, where usable resources are concentrated in servers: the “core” areas of the Internet. P2P services organize a grouping of resources of variable size belonging to the participants and allow them to use it collectively.