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Sure, there are exceptions, and I'm not saying it's impossible, but making a decentralised network popular is going to be an uphill struggle, especially in an a

by halo 17y ago

Sure, there are exceptions, and I'm not saying it's impossible, but making a decentralised network popular is going to be an uphill struggle, especially in an already crowded space full of popular centralised competitors which are already free-of-charge when the end-user benefit is marginal at best and the usefulness of the service is proportional to the amount of users.

jerf 17y ago
But the long term trends are clear: Centralized players lose to decentralized services. If you think that's not true, you need to broaden your perspective and look at more history. All those centralized services you see today? Those aren't the trend, those are the remnants of the stacks upon stacks of corpses of centralized services destroyed by decentralization, the only things still standing. From email, through RSS, and through Twitters eventual decentralized replacement, the march has been relentless. What reason do you have to think that a pattern in place for decades is suddenly going to stop because Mighty Twitter is just so damned special? Think in historical terms, across the decades, and Twitter is little more than a blip in the trend. I'm sure Twitter is going to make some money before it goes, but I'm also sure there won't be a Twitter in ten years, but instead a protocol. Same for Facebook, incidentally. Centralization is O(n^4) to decentralization's O(1.1^n); sure, it looks like centralization is just awesome for a while, but it always ends up stomped flat in the end.
- kristiandupont 17y ago
  I am not saying this couldn't be true, but looking at trends in such a generalized and abstract way is very academic. You could also say that there has been a trend lately from decentralized (email, blogs) towards facebook, twitter all the other social networks. However, this insight hardly allows you to predict anything interesting.

by halo 17y ago

jerf 17y ago

But the long term trends are clear: Centralized players lose to decentralized services. If you think that's not true, you need to broaden your perspective and look at more history. All those centralized services you see today? Those aren't the trend, those are the remnants of the stacks upon stacks of corpses of centralized services destroyed by decentralization, the only things still standing. From email, through RSS, and through Twitters eventual decentralized replacement, the march has been relentless. What reason do you have to think that a pattern in place for decades is suddenly going to stop because Mighty Twitter is just so damned special? Think in historical terms, across the decades, and Twitter is little more than a blip in the trend. I'm sure Twitter is going to make some money before it goes, but I'm also sure there won't be a Twitter in ten years, but instead a protocol. Same for Facebook, incidentally. Centralization is O(n^4) to decentralization's O(1.1^n); sure, it looks like centralization is just awesome for a while, but it always ends up stomped flat in the end.

kristiandupont 17y ago
I am not saying this couldn't be true, but looking at trends in such a generalized and abstract way is very academic. You could also say that there has been a trend lately from decentralized (email, blogs) towards facebook, twitter all the other social networks. However, this insight hardly allows you to predict anything interesting.