P2P in all its glory

Leaving aside the woes of Napster for a minute, let’s try and pin down the definition of ‘peer-to-peer’ (or ‘P2P’ as you must refer to it) as it relates to network computing. According to commentator Lee Gomes (2001), P2P is a “computing scheme in which information is stored on many PCs, reducing or eliminating the need for a central repository like a web server”. There are several variants on this theme, the first of which we’ve already examined – Napster and its clones, where users get together to swap assets that they’ve created or purloined from elsewhere. Whether the Napster concept extends well into other domains is debatable. According to A. Joon Yun of Palo Alto Investors: “There has to be a value proposition to get P2P members to aggregate, and other than music, people haven’t yet identified a good one”. Perhaps learning provides a value proposition, but more of that later.

A second instance of P2P is what can be called ‘distributed computing’, in which many thousands of users pool what has become their somewhat-excessive CPU processing power to solve a major computing problem in areas such as medical research. Nice in theory, but that’s just about all it is at present. A third category is the use of P2P to solve problems and share information in collaborative work situations, using products such as Groove, from Ray Ozzie, the original creator of Lotus Notes. These applications only partially comply with our P2P definition and one has the suspicion that the label has been attached to add a certain buzz to what are really just extensions to the capabilities of existing office products.

People want to make something of P2P and one has to ask why. One reason is because technologists have come up with the idea and are now looking for problems it can solve. As Job Katz comments on his posting to Slashdot (www.slashdot.org): “In most of the world, inventors identify a need and wear themselves out creating innovations to meet it. On the Net, the creative process seems to work in reverse: you make cool and exciting stuff and assume that somebody, somewhere will eventually want to use it.”

Less cynically, there is a more fundamental principle that is expressed through P2P. The energy that made the World Wide Web such a phenomenal success so quickly was not commercial; it was not driven by the world’s major media and telecommunications giants. The World Wide Web was created originally as a way for scientists to share research information, across national boundaries and without cost - P2P in spirit, even if it did require the use of servers as intermediaries between peers. The growth of the Web from these humble beginnings was driven almost entirely by the sense of community of ordinary Internet users, the desire to make things happen from the very fringes of the network, without the approval of any central authority. Anyone could create a website and so anyone did. The spirit of P2P is at the heart of the web experience – unleash this spirit and unexpected things happen, unexpectedly fast.

Case study: Creating and sharing learning in local government

The IDeA (Improvement and Development Agency) supports training, development and performance improvement across the UK’s many hundreds of local authorities, large and small. At present some 600m is spent on training annually by local authorities, with the responsibility for the majority of this spending devolved to the local level. With such a large target population, including a large proportion of knowledge workers, and broadly similar needs across the population, the IDeA is well aware of the potential contribution that e-learning could make, but is reluctant to initiate a large, centralised content-creation project. Instead the IDeA has embraced the philosophy that ‘nobody is as smart as everybody’ and is banking on people power to get e-learning going big time.

Susan Biddle is Director, Learning for IDeA: “Local government is a unique sector, in which each organisation provides similar services, and indeed similar training, on a non-competitive basis, but where it has traditionally been difficult to share learning and information resources. The subject matter experts in local government are out there in the field, not at the centre, as is a great deal of valuable learning material. We’ve launched our peer-to-peer e-learning service to make it as easy as possible for local authorities to both contribute to and benefit from a shared repository of learning resources.”

The system, constructed by e-learning developer Epic Group plc, allows authorities to upload content in a wide variety of forms, from standard Office documents to interactive lessons, created using an in-built authoring tool. All content is tagged according to IMS standards, to make it easy for users to find out what each piece of content contains, its purpose, author and format.

The IDeA was aware that it needed to play a major role in the successful launch of the system. Says Biddle: “To ensure that the system contained a solid base of quality content, we decided to develop something like 15-20 hours of learning materials each year, geared to the specific needs of local government. Then to encourage the contribution of additional materials by authorities themselves, we’re working closely with local champions to run regional events, including training for content authors.” Response to the new system has so far been extremely enthusiastic, so look out for a flurry of e-learning activity at your local council offices later this year.