Digital Matters - Issue 46

The underlying promise of peer-to-peer computing (from an information-technology point of view) is that it will harness all of the unused processing power, all of the unoccupied storage space, into a gigantic network powerhouse. And in doing so, it will unclog servers and free ever-more-expensive bandwidth. The correlative promise is that peer-to-peer software will make software systems fully "interoperable" by carrying them through, and back and forth across, the peer-to-peer network. I can work inside your software programs, and you can work inside mine, because peer-to-peer computing imports software into the work space. Both promises, even if only partially realized, insure that companies will adopt peer-to-peer programs and platforms.

But more immediately, what matters most is the impact that peer-to-peer computing will have on work -- and on games, education, politics, and culture.

Groove is a platform for Free Agent Nation. It may well be the platform for Free Agent Nation. It gives that vast constituency standing to handle major tasks without being undone by server costs and expensive bandwidth. It makes a Groove-connected team as formidable and as nimble as any ad agency, consultancy, corporate division, product-development group, research lab ? you name it.

Just as important, Groove turns responders into initiators. If you have a really great marketing idea for Pepsi, and you know people who can provide the various skill sets to make that idea fly, all of you can work together in Groove's shared space. And in working together, you can create -- way out there beyond the edge of the organization -- the edgiest marketing campaign ever introduced at Pepsi.

More than anything else, the power of peer-to-peer computing is that it creates an enormous sense of possibility -- and that sense of possibility is the one thing that's missing at almost every corporation. How do you get at the creativity and energy that exist within the people at the edge of every large enterprise? Electrify it. Groove makes it possible to light up the edge.

Of course, lighting up the edge of an organization changes the practice of management. Slogans about empowerment and teamwork and decentralized decision making come face-to-face with the reality of what "lighting up the edge" implies.

From a management point of view, there are some defining questions: If you really do light up the edge, how do you get its thinking and ideas back to the center once it has its own peer-to-peer network? (For that matter, once you electrify a peer-to-peer network, where is the center?) How do you build a corporate community that engenders loyalty if the folks on the edge are building peer-to-peer communities -- their own communities to which they will become loyal?

There are, of course, hundreds of issues raised by the power of peer-to-peer networking. Napster has raised the issue of intellectual property rights. Someone will soon hack into TiVo's digital recording system and do to television programming what Napster did to the music business. Groove and other peer-to-peer technologies raise intellectual property-right questions as well: Who owns the marketing idea, the new design, the new invention?

But the immediate challenge posed by peer-to-peer technologies and platforms has to do with leadership. What is leadership in a peer-to-peer world? In self-organizing groups, what are team dynamics? What holds it all together? What brings it back to the center? Oh, and by the way, what is the role of the center?

In the short term, even new questions yield to an old answer: money. You pay people to engage in peer networks and see what they return. If they return new and better ideas, you pay them more money. If they return rubbish and nonsense, you cut them off.

In the longer term, the answer is values. If you think in political or cultural terms, what binds people together is shared values (and, on the dark side, shared resentments). Corporations aren't really capable of organizing resentments; it runs counter to their purpose. But corporations can (and do) embody certain values. Peer-to-peer technologies challenge organizations to make those values central to their future success. Ultimately, the question that Groove poses isn't, How will we work together? It's, Who are we and what do we stand for?

Peer networks are essentially all about values. Peer groups self-organize around shared interests, in the higher context of purpose. Some football fans organize into betting pools. Others organize into Super Bowl parties. Purpose defines the expression of interest and the sense of community.

For the peer network to coalesce with the corporate network requires the foundation of shared purpose. The more that peer networks come to life, the more influential they become. They become unions of purpose. And because they are networked, they cannot be swatted aside. What you do to one person in the network, you do to the network.