All-
There's a 1950s sci-fi story called "The Skills of Xanadu" by Theodore
Sturgeon (available in his book The Golden Helix) which in part
inspired my OSCOMAK site:
http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com/oscomak/
Basically, over forty years ago , Sturgeon envisioned knowledge crystals
that one wore which wirelessly shared knowledge with other people's
crystals, allowing an entire culture to draw instantly from the best
knowledge (and skills) on any topic available. Sound anything like
today's or tomorrow's internet?
The idea is taking off now in the form of distributed internet file
systems.
Such systems don't necessarily reply on well known servers with names
like the typical HTTP internet we use today. They instead distribute
information as more like email (but directly, peer to peer, instead of
through intermediate servers). This is an idea we might want to think
about some for an OHS/DKR.
As was pointed out to me about a decade ago by a SUNY Stony Brook
University computer scientist (I'm trying to remember his name -- worked
on some UN database stuff in the 60s which is why I contacted him), the
total storage potential of millions of computers on a network is far
greater than any individual computer, and so it makes sense when
thinking about knowledge repositories to think about distributed ones,
even given there will be some redundant overlap (which itself is good
because redundancy promotes stability and error recovery).
Two recent slashdot articles on Gnutella led me to some interesting
things (Gnutella and Freenet). Just like much of the growth of the
internet was driven by the desire to download porn, it looks like much
of the growth of these distributed file systems systems is lead by the
desire to download illicitly copied MP3 audio files. However, in both
cases of the internet and Feenet, the potential of the systems goes far
beyond the questionable early use.
The New World of Gnutella
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/04/03/2138211&mode=thread&threshold=2
Gnutella v.56 Out?
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/04/03/1044243&mode=thread
HOWARD WEAVER: The new world of Gnutella
http://www.nandotimes.com/opinions/story/body/0,1096,500188504-500253045-501284316-0,00.html
"Freenet is a peer-to-peer network designed to allow the distribution of
information over the Internet in an efficient manner, without fear of
censorship. Freenet is completely decentralized, meaning that there is
no person, computer, or organisation in control of Freenet or essential
to its operation. This means that Freenet cannot be attacked like
centralized peer-to-peer systems such as Napster. Freenet also employs
intelligent routing and caching meaning that it learns to route requests
more efficiently, automatically mirrors popular data, makes network
flooding almost impossible, and moves data to where it is in greatest
demand. All of this makes it much more efficient and scalable than
systems such as Gnutella."
http://freenet.sourceforge.net/
"The Street Performer Protocol, an electronic-commerce mechanism to
facilitate the private financing of public works."
http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue4_6/kelsey/index.html
-Paul Fernhout
Kurtz-Fernhout Software
=========================================================
Developers of custom software and educational simulations
Creators of the Garden with Insight(TM) garden simulator
http://www.kurtz-fernhout.com
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Wed Apr 05 2000 - 03:53:38 PDT