man-76202_640When someone mentions the term “Peer to Peer” to you, your mind probably goes to now defunct Napster, which was the first highly popular, widely used Peer-to-Peer service in existence. Maybe, if you're more up to speed on things, it makes you think of Pirate Bay and Bittorrent. In both cases then, the view of P2P technology is something that resides off on the fringes of the internet that not many self respecting businessmen and women would have much to do with, nor give any serious thought to.

You would be incorrect in that assessment. The reality is that the P2P industry is booming, has already shaped the current technological landscape, and is poised to do so to an even greater degree in the years ahead.

How P2P Has Already Shaped Things

The basic mechanism which drives P2P is the idea that something you want resides somewhere out there on the internet, and you have the ability, by way of technology, to bring a copy of it to you and your local machine. You don't have to know where the thing you want is, and you don't have to know how it got there or who controls it. All you have to know is how to tap into the source. The rest of the details don't matter.

Thus, using a program like Bittorrent, you can search for that TV show you missed last week, and the program will go chase down bits and pieces of it from various points on the net, assembling a copy for your enjoyment on your PC.

That same basic thinking has been instrumental in driving the formation of the Cloud, and cloud computing. Increasingly, it doesn't matter where a file or service or process lives on the net. What matters is that it exists, and you can access it. A different application of the exact same principle.

The Shape of Things To Come

Already, we've seen the P2P paradigm begin to shift into other areas, and this is where the future of the industry lies. Gone are the days of centralization. The internet is an amorphous beast that lives everywhere, and any part of it is just as capable of delivering goods and services to us. For a tiny taste of things to come, let's look at two specific movements that are currently shaping, and will continue to shape P2P and the internet as a whole for years to come.

P2P Lending

There are dozens of these sites springing up all over the net, and a few have grown quite large in a very short length of time. The idea here is that people who need money can post their needs and information about themselves, the purpose of their loan, and their ability to pay. People with money to lend can choose to invest in them, funding tiny parts of their needed loan individually, until a sufficient number of people have collectively agreed to fund the loan. Then, the person requesting the loan gets the money and schedules the repayment.

Their record of success has been quite good, and it has proved to be a dynamic, vibrant alternate avenue for funding that does not require sitting down with a loan officer from a bank. They've been not only cut out of the process, but rendered irrelevant. This is not to suggest that bank lending will vanish and dry up, far from it. What it does accomplish however is a further empowerment of the individual. The bottom line is, we don't necessarily need the banks any more. We can find our own way, and chart our own course without them.

Distributed Goods and Services

The second takes the form of AirBnB, which you can look at as being something of a peer to peer hotelier service. People with spare rooms or sofas can offer them up for rent. People who need a place to stay can accept those accommodations. No brick and mortar hotel needed, required, or even necessarily desired. And don't think this idea is limited to couch surfing. There are other sites that are utilizing the same basic idea to rent out their cars, or even spare office space to anyone who needs it. In a similar vein, Bitcoin itself is a distributed currency offering completely anonymous P2P transactions, cutting out the need for third party processing altogether and further empowering the individual.

The future is looking increasingly decentralized, and you've got P2P technology to thank for that. So why not start to imagine how a decentralized future can help your business achieve its goals.