noirExtreme

Last Monday I had a long eye-opening phone conversation with Robert Young, strategic advisor to WeedShare, that I thought I had to blog about (WeedShare is a system that rewards file sharers for distributing and selling legal digital content).
Then on Wednesday Robert posted a really good summary piece on the Broadband Blog and made my task a lot easier.

The part to which I dedicated quite a bit of my own processing power since our chat is summarised by the following:

Starting next year (2006), millions of people will begin to equip themselves with computers and portable devices capable of swapping files at a speed of 100Mbps, all wirelessly (WiFi/802.11n and UWB). Think about that… 100Mbps!! That’s about a hundred times faster than what the average broadband user in the U.S. is accustomed to today.

More specifically, what I’m talking about here is short-range computer2computer, device2device connectivity directly between people in close proximity of one another.

[...] To make the picture more complete, let’s also include the next generation of mobile phones that will be capable of direct phone2phone connections via lower-bandwidth Bluetooth, as well as wireless home networks and consumer electronics (e.g. UWB-enabled plasma TVs) that are coming to market that allow people to easily transfer any digital media directly from one device to another.

This perspective on things made me realise that what is coming up here is the potential development of new user behaviour where ad-hoc peer to peer connections or even mesh networks are estalished beyond the edge of the traditional network for sharing specific information or content and then are dissolved as quickly as they were formed.

1. Such an evolution will undoubtedly give a lot more power to device manufacturers in the battle for the control of the consumers' digital experience. Think of a dating application where mobile phones or PDAs send your profile and look for a matching profile within the range of the integrated Bluetooth radio for example. Devices actually deliver services and networking is handled by the end users themselves. No service provider is required for this to work.
2. If file swapping starts taking place off the Internet in any major volume, content owners are going to be under a lot more pressure still as they will lose all control on what people do with their intellectual property.

Get your popcorn and sit down comfortably, this show is going to be entertaining...