What Role for Users in a More Social Peer-to-Peer
* Paper. What role for users in a more social peer-to-peer?. Francesca Musiani. (July 12th, 2010). Communication presented at the 6th International Graduate Conference, UFR Communication, Université Sorbonne Nouvelle – Paris 3, Paris: France.
Description
Francesca Musiani:
"Recent years have witnessed the birth and development of a number of projects and applications proposing alternatives to Internet-based services and tools that are increasingly relevant in our daily lives, as through them we are able to search for information, connect and share content with friends, manage and preserve our data. These alternatives have one thing in common: they are built, or are on their way to do so, on peer-to-peer (P2P) technology.
Indeed, the overwhelming majority of P2P networks destined to file sharing – a use that is the primary reason of this technology's celebrity, but by no means its only possible one – treat their users as anonymous, non-interlinked entities, even if, de facto, “groups” are created and relationships established on and in them. We can however observe, in these “alternative” projects, more and more cases where P2P tools are conceptualized and shaped taking into account - in many of their developers’ own words - a “social-based paradigm” that aims at reproducing more accurately social phenomena such as friend requests, affinity-based community aggregation, trust attribution.
By drawing on three empirical terrains currently under way, this presentation elaborates a working response to the following questions: how is this “social paradigm” being fleshed out within alternative P2P tools? In what respects a “more social” P2P has implications for users? In what respects this attribution of priority to the user as an actor in one or more groups has an effect on P2P tools, and in return, these tools on the place and relevance of the user in processes of content creation, sharing, and distribution?
The main conclusion of this paper is that innovators in P2P are currently operating a major modification in their very priorities of research and development: indeed, what guides them is an attribution of priority to the user, both as an individual and as actor in a group, rather than to a number of other factors and phenomena - anonymity first and foremost - that law, politics, or additional technical constraints have led them to privilege in turn.
Currently being deployed within these innovation projects would therefore be the union of this priority and of P2P technology, considered as better adapted to the needs of a user-within- a-network, and more effective and appropriate from a technical point of view. The founding elements (reciprocal availability of resources, voluntary collaboration, identification of specificities and affinities) in the portraits of users and collectives of users coming out of the analysed projects and devices suggest a possible repositioning of users vis-à-vis other actors in the socio-technical environment of Internet-based services: not only as producers, but also as managers and hosts of digital contents they create and modify." (http://www.csi.ensmp.fr/Perso/Musiani/Musiani_IGC6.pdf)
Full Text
Introduction
Since the inception of the Internet, the principle of decentralisation has governed the circulation of transmissions and communications on the « network of networks ». However, the introduction of the World Wide Web in 1990 has progressively but widely led to the diffusion of “client-server” architecture models; the most widespread and diffused Internet-based services (social networks, instant messaging tools, digital content storage services…) are based upon technical and economic models in which end users ask for information, data, services to “farms” of powerful servers, stocking information and/or managing “traffic” on the network. Thus, even if traffic on the Internet functions on the basis on the generalised distribution principle, it has now taken the form of concentration around servers delivering access to content. Yet, this modality of organisation for structures and services, in and on the network, is not the only possible one – and while being the most diffused one, it is maybe not the most effective. Thus, the search for alternatives is currently in progress.
Peer-to-peer (P2P) architecture is in the process to affirm itself as one of these alternatives. It is a computer network model structured in such a way that communications and/or exchanges take place between nodes having the same responsibility within the system. The dichotomy between server (provider of the service) and client(s) (requesters of the service), typical of the client-server model, is replaced by a situation where every client becomes a server as well, where all peers have a resource and all peers request it.
Inasmuch as it uses the resources present in the network in a different way than the client-server model – a model that, at present, constitutes the structure of an overwhelming majority of Internet-based services – P2P architecture can be analysed as an “opportunity” for these services. This is the primary goal of my dissertation, of which I present briefly a part here.
Part I. P2P architecture as an « opportunity » for online services
A laboratory for reconfiguration of practices
My dissertation raises the question of the materialisation, by means of P2P technology, of a social, political and economic “opportunity” for Internet-based services. To whom are developers of P2P applications destining the objects they create, and what representations/anticipations of users and uses? How does P2P technology, at its current development stage, intervene in the fabrication of collectives of users? How are rights and juridical concepts, such as security, privacy and property, changing and being changed by and with P2P?
Therefore, my dissertation aims at exploring how this opportunity for change takes shape by means of and through P2P. The case studies presented in the dissertation detail the construction of processes and dynamics representing not only the changes entailed by P2P, but the technology itself; and they show what allows developers and pioneer users of such devices to manage economic, social and political implications of P2P. The approach adopted is, then, a pragmatic one, inasmuch as my starting point is the following observation. In the information and communication technologies (ICTs) field, a variety of projects and applications are currently seeing the light, that address in different ways and for diverse purposes a “P2P technology” defined transversally as “decentralised, legal, private, social and user-centred alternative”: a noun and five adjectives, and six categories I choose as entry points of my work, of which I observe the evolutions and modifications over time and space.
I argue that with the applications and projects that constitute my case studies, I have at my disposal a laboratory for observation of the ways in which P2P systems reconfigure the organisation of the spaces they inform, and of the conditions and organisational principles allowing them to target an increased effectiveness. By adopting the above-mentioned categories as entry points in the subject, I propose to deploy a comprehensive view on a plurality of projects and applications, constituting our case studies. While serving quite diverse necessities of use (social networking, data storage, Web search), these projects and applications have one original trait in common, concerning their technical architecture, with respect to more diffused applications aimed at the very same needs: all of them are based on peer-to-peer technology.
Case studies
Chosen for their diversity (and therefore, potential representativeness) in terms of development stage (from university-based research projects to fully-launched private companies); type of service provided to the end user (storage, search engine, video streaming…) and finally geographical location, the analysed case studies are the following. Tribler (http://www.tribler.org/), a programme that facilitates search and sharing of private contents between users, which is currently the main partner of the P2P-Next (http://www.p2p-next.org/) project, funded by the European Union so as to develop a TV on-demand service; Wuala (http://www.wuala.com/), an application for distributed access and storage of private files; Gossple (http://www.gossple.fr/), a decentralised search engine projects, aiming at valorising affinities and preferences of end users in the processes of query and return of the results; PariPari (http://paripari.it/), a university-based project of multi-functional P2P platform, on which a number of different services may be built without recurring to separate applications; and Move&Play (http://www.moveandplay.com/), a tool for digital content hosting and management, a case study in opposition to the previous ones due to its status of “repented P2P”.
A “real-time” sociology of innovation
Thus, the empirical study undertaken in my dissertation concerns both existing devices and projects whose applications are currently being fleshed out and consolidated. My approach is, as a consequence, a live investigation, transversal to the applications concerned, of uses and technologies that are “being done”, trying by these means to reach a common vision of the directions P2P is taking. The “real-time” sociology of innovation I am experimenting with in my dissertation seems a proper and maybe the only method so as to apprehend variable situations alongside different dimensions, and to reach dynamic conclusions on their possible developments and applications. At the same time, my aim is to try and question the ideological or utopian – inasmuch as they claim to be carriers of a more decentralised, dispersed Internet – dimension of the projects at stake. This utopian character is here taken as an object to try and demonstrate the extent to which it entails different way-to-do’s, explains different choices, finds echoes in other people’s actions. Along these lines, I give a special attention to the observation of intermediaries, transformations, negotiations, modifications of objects and moments in which the projects and devices are “put on trial” (mise à l’épreuve in the sense of Boltanski and Latour). For example, a specific focus is placed on the divergent recollections of the same events that have influenced the evolution of the devices, beyond the pre-established schedules and programmes.
Beyond uses, fleshing out the technology
By adopting such an approach, I wish on the other hand to overcome, and underline the limits of, today’s prevailing paradigm when taking P2P as a subject of study: generally, even when they focus on forms of organisation in or by means of P2P dynamics (for example, by studying cooperation in online communities), research in social science has until now opted for a reduction of P2P to the uses it entails and makes possible, one among them in particular (illegal sharing of music or film files protected by intellectual property rights, notably copyright). Therefore, my dissertation aims at underlining the importance of studying the link between the ways in which applications take shape, and their possible influences on practices, rights and social relations. My work intends to be an example of study, from a social sciences perspective, of the “lower layers” of P2P applications, an analysis of their consequences on the types of exchanges taking place there, and on the characteristics and profiles of their users. In this way, my dissertation intends to flesh out how some attributes of technology, of which users often lack a direct knowledge or awareness, are bound to fully influence and inform issues that are often crucial for uses, such as the treatment and physical location of data, computing resources management, information retrieval.
Studying architectures
A consequence of this approach is a specific attention to an aspect of P2P technology that is not only very discreet, but even invisible to the eyes of the users: their architecture. What is the shaping of links, nodes, mandatory transit points, information propagation protocols – in one word, of their architecture – telling us about P2P-based applications, and of the opportunities they present? This interest in the structure of architectures derives from the hypothesis that particular forms of distribution call for specific procedures and uses. It stems from the idea that an analysis having P2P as a technical architecture as a starting point – rather than file sharing, or another specific use made possible by the technology among many possible – is a more appropriate tool to understand present and future changes facilitated by P2P, and social actors developing, using and regulating them. The choice of architectures, transparent artefacts by deliberate choice of their creators, as the starting point of our study is informed by the literature in the field of Science & Technology Studies (STS) on infrastructures as constantly evolving socio-technical systems, informed not only by physical elements invisible to the end user, but also by factors such as social organisation and knowledge sharing.
Part II. Towards a “more social” P2P? Reshaping networks, rethinking users
The second part of my dissertation, on which I intend to focus the second half of my presentation, focuses on the role, intended/represented or in the process of being constructed, of users within the analysed projects and devices. Relying on the two entry points that define the P2P alternative as “social” and “user-centred”, this part explores the representations that the developers of P2P applications have of their users, what are the present and future collectives, uses, organisational forms they foresee and intend to give existence to by means of the proposed technologies. Where it is possible (for those applications at a more advanced development stage), this part also touches upon the first ways of appropriating such services, and the relations and exchanges that may appear on and in them.
The introduction of a “social paradigm” in P2P
How do innovators concerned with P2P seek to “bring the social” in it? Indeed, in most classical P2P applications, even if they de facto allow the shaping and formatting of groups as well as the establishment of relations, the role of users is mostly supposed to be one of anonymous, non-linked entities. The reasons for this go beyond merely technical aspects, to invest a set of political and juridical choices that have led the users of “classical” P2P to have as their first preoccupation either invisibility or the impossibility to be retraced (and the developers to work on such a need). This approach, on the other hand, has led to neglect, in both the phase of development and of use, a possible added value that would derive from the exploitation of mechanisms typical of social networks (friend requests, affinity-based community aggregation, trust attribution), currently enjoying a wide success among users. The analysed projects and applications seem to move alongside this direction, sharing a common concern to conceptualize and shape P2P by taking from now on into account, and trying to modelise accurately, these « social » phenomena. The P2P opportunity is, in this case, to harness innovative architectures able to integrate the networking at the two levels of interface and application, able to make social links true network links.
By retracing this approach within the different projects, I intend to demonstrate the existence of a “red line”, transversal to the case studies, consisting in getting inspired by the elements of interpersonal relations to shape P2P evolution: notably, in applying such mechanisms to mechanisms of content search, recommendation, and up/download.
User first? From the facilitation of exchanges to the capture of affinities How do the projects studied here seek, by means of the devices they build, to “replace the user at the centre” of processes of content creation, distribution and modification? Depending upon the different cases, the application is constructed in such a way that the user can become the authority of certification of his profile, giving his contacts a certificate or a key of which he is the creator; that affinities between users and their requests can be detected in a satisfactory way and the information captured where it is in the first place, close to the user. Which poses notable challenges in terms of the creation of distributed algorithms allowing phenomena at a global scale to derive from individual decisions, the establishment of links endowed with sense between billions of users and objects, and find the most effective manner to capture and harness affinities, habits, recommendations, and face arbitrary behaviours. P2P innovators are currently operating a major modification in their very priorities of research and development: indeed, what guides them is an attribution of priority to the user, both as an individual and as actor in a group, rather than to a number of other factors and phenomena - anonymity first and foremost - that law, politics, or additional technical constraints have led them to privilege in turn. Currently being deployed within these innovation projects would therefore be the union of this priority and of P2P technology, considered as better adapted to the needs of a user-within-a-network, and more effective and appropriate from a technical point of view.
Concluding remarks
The founding elements (reciprocal availability of resources, voluntary collaboration, identification of specificities and affinities) in the portraits of users, and collectives of users, coming out of the analysed projects and devices suggest a possible repositioning of end users vis-à-vis other actors in the socio-technical environment of Internet-based services: not only as producers, but also as managers and hosts of digital contents they create and modify."