"If you could utilize the resources of the end users' computers, you could do things much more efficiently"
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Efficiency is the respectable mask on a more radical proposition: shift power away from centralized institutions and into the messy, distributed reality of everyone else's machines. Zennstrom, best known for building Skype, isn’t daydreaming about faster code for its own sake. He’s articulating the founding logic of peer-to-peer: the network becomes the product, and “resources” means not just CPU cycles and bandwidth, but reach, resilience, and scale without paying for a server farm.
The phrasing does quiet rhetorical work. “If you could” frames it as a hypothetical, softening what is basically a business model and an architectural coup. “Utilize” is clinical; it sidesteps the creepier verbs lurking nearby: borrow, commandeer, conscript. “End users’ computers” turns people into infrastructure. That’s the subtext: in a world where attention and data are already monetized, the next frontier is computation itself.
Historically, this lands in the early-2000s moment when P2P systems promised democratization and delivered disruption. Skype’s audio calls worked because each participant’s device helped route traffic; the network was harder to knock down, cheaper to run, and terrifyingly hard to regulate. The efficiency claim is real, but it’s also a politics: decentralized systems evade gatekeepers, from telcos to governments, by design.
Read today, it carries a faintly prophetic chill. “Utilize the end users” is basically the blueprint for everything from edge computing to the uneasy bargain of modern platforms: you get convenience; they get to turn your device, your bandwidth, and often your data into their competitive advantage.
The phrasing does quiet rhetorical work. “If you could” frames it as a hypothetical, softening what is basically a business model and an architectural coup. “Utilize” is clinical; it sidesteps the creepier verbs lurking nearby: borrow, commandeer, conscript. “End users’ computers” turns people into infrastructure. That’s the subtext: in a world where attention and data are already monetized, the next frontier is computation itself.
Historically, this lands in the early-2000s moment when P2P systems promised democratization and delivered disruption. Skype’s audio calls worked because each participant’s device helped route traffic; the network was harder to knock down, cheaper to run, and terrifyingly hard to regulate. The efficiency claim is real, but it’s also a politics: decentralized systems evade gatekeepers, from telcos to governments, by design.
Read today, it carries a faintly prophetic chill. “Utilize the end users” is basically the blueprint for everything from edge computing to the uneasy bargain of modern platforms: you get convenience; they get to turn your device, your bandwidth, and often your data into their competitive advantage.
Quote Details
| Topic | Internet |
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