Sixth Wave of Liberation
Peer to Peer Upstreamers is a trend analysis by Jaap van Till,written for a Dutch audience, but translated here.
The full article is at http://www.vantill.dds.nl/p2pupstreamers.html
It originally appeared in Dutch, in Netkwesties, at http://www.netkwesties.nl/editie136/column1.html
In this excerpt, Jaan van Till contextualises P2P Cooperation as a sixth wave of liberation:
With respect to cultural signals and images p2p is a genuine wave like I have seen to come and pass a couple of times in my lifetime.It may sound very pass_ now but when I heard it for the first time in 1955 it was exciting, nearly magical and wonderfully strange at the same time. The thundering beat of the orkestra of âking of swingâ Benny Goodman at the Carnegie Hall concert (1938). In the dark listening to the jazz programs of Willis Conover (VOA/ AFN station in Germany) in my bed with a headset connected to a self made christaldiode-radioreceiver. With long wires hung in the trees. My parents did not understand this technology. That strange jazz music was officially considered harmful, just like comic books. Some parents referred to the swing music as âcoming from the jungleâ? and âspoiling the mores of the youngâ?. Those young did however dance and jive âen masseâ, shouting with pleasure at parties on this music, totally disregarding these square-parental warnings.
Another liberation wave came with the records of the Beatles. Also wonderfully creative and strange when you heard them for the first time on your transistor-radio. Magic. The third wave came with the personal powertool of the PC. Computer-Lib and Dream Machine! I remember how proud we were at the meetings of the Hobby Computer Club (HCC) to show dazzled friends how we could tame large boxes of electronics and let early AppleIIâs do tricks on screens. And later connect with other nerds the world over with FidoNet p2p email. Also then bottom-up acceptance and fears & disbelief of old farts that was disobeyed and neglected. _
The fourth liberation wave began not long ago but nevertheless many can not even imagine to live without Email and The Web, so embedded is Internet in our daily life and work. And there have been warnings _(mostly from non-wired not yet retired persons), ever since we began with dial-up modems, FidoNet and UUCP, against the harmful effects of Internet, like porno, racial hate sites, viruses and the digital divide. People who live on Internet and the talented Creative Class, producing digital media-content, are the inhabitants of this fourth wave, who freed themselves of the restrictions of time and distance. What binds them together is attention (memes for eyeballs) and shared interests. Now we are in the middle of the mobile and multi-user gamebox explosion, the fifth wave. There are now more cellphone handsets in my country than there are inhabitants. Small kids get a GSM phone from both separated parents, to keep track of where they are. Without any blockade of fence, national boundary or mental model kids can cooperate, play and live in more than one tribe at the same time.
The sixth wave
Unstoppable the sixth liberation wave is coming up now on a massive scale. P2P cooperation without the obstacles of scarcity of bandwidth or scarcity of ether-frequencies.