1. Unexpected Peer-to-Peer
Massimo Ferronato
[epidemic]
Catania. May 28th 2003

2. Massimo Ferronato [epidemic]
Social sculpture
Art that can not shape society and therefore also can not penetrate the heart questions of society is no art
Joseph Beuys, 1985
Massimo Ferronato [epidemic]

3. Massimo Ferronato [epidemic]
Internet and society
Since mid 90s Internet has become a social place
Its foundation rules haven’t helped us understanding the way the world has used this new media
We learned that:
We must design network technologies thinking about the way they will be influenced by the human behavior
any new protocol, technology or tool we add to the internet world will be used in a different way from the original design
Massimo Ferronato [epidemic]

4. Internet peer-to-peer
P2P is a network architecture where all the nodes share files among the others
It’s been famous since Napster advent (and collapse)
It’s very related to all the latest copyright discussions
Massimo Ferronato [epidemic]

5. What’s good about peer-to-peer
It’s a un-centric technology
It doesn’t need leaders or any form of control
It’s owned by nobody
It allows an easy sharing of files
It promotes the idea of people to people communication
Massimo Ferronato [epidemic]

6. Eccentric peer-to-peer
Imagine a program which use the peer-to-peer technology for sharing ideas
Imagine it allows people to share their own statements
Imagine it allows people to see all the other people statements and agree about them
Imagine that statements to be linked to small programs, which allow for the execution of some actions
Imagine the program execution is automatically synchronized by the peer-to-peer protocol
Massimo Ferronato [epidemic]

7. Massimo Ferronato [epidemic]
Antimafia
Antimafia was released at the Museum of Applied Arts of Frankfurt on May 23rd 2002
Antimafia is a program developed for the Windows environment
It’s based on the gnutella protocol
It allows plug-in action programs
It’s freeware
Massimo Ferronato [epidemic]

8. Massimo Ferronato [epidemic]
Why Windows ?
It’s the most used operating system
Our target customers use windows
Antimafia is intended to be mainstream
Massimo Ferronato [epidemic]

9. Massimo Ferronato [epidemic]
Gnutella
Gnutella is a peer-to-peer protocol
We can use it freely, because its specifications are open source
Nobody owns it
Massimo Ferronato [epidemic]

10. Massimo Ferronato [epidemic]
Gnutella: what’s for
It designed to exchange files via Internet
All nodes are both client and server, where clients request files and servers offer them
To participate to a gnutella network, the node need only the IP address of one of its member
No main server (as in Napster or Kazaa)
Massimo Ferronato [epidemic]

11. Massimo Ferronato [epidemic]
Gnutella: searching
Searching works similarly to connecting
A node sends out a search request
it is propagated through the network
each server that has matching terms passes back its result set
Massimo Ferronato [epidemic]

12. Gnutella: downloading
each server acts as a miniature HTTP web server
When a node finds a search result that wants to download, it connects to the server and requests that file
Massimo Ferronato [epidemic]

13. Dynamic grouping for acting together

14. How is a group created on the internet
Newsgroups
Chat
Web Site
Massimo Ferronato [epidemic]

15. How the action is synchronized
Date / Time
Chat
Massimo Ferronato [epidemic]

16. Old style activity flow
A statement is sent using standard technique, with comments about the program needed for the action
People need to understand how the activity is meant to be executed
People who agreed need to take care of the activity execution at the established time
Massimo Ferronato [epidemic]

17. Massimo Ferronato [epidemic]
Issues
People could be not skilled for participate in the proposed action
Synchronization could be hard, and the resulting action effect is diminished
Massimo Ferronato [epidemic]

18. Massimo Ferronato [epidemic]
Effects
Real people tends to avoid participating to online action because they are frustrated by technical problems
Action groups tend to be composed by selected people, loosing the community effect and feeling
Massimo Ferronato [epidemic]

19. Massimo Ferronato [epidemic]
Dynamic grouping
Everyone agrees about one standard interface
The community is self established
The action can be proposed by everyone
No central management
No filtering
Massimo Ferronato [epidemic]

20. Massimo Ferronato [epidemic]
Dynamic grouping
Action plugin is selected from a set of preloaded actions
Or a new action plugin is created by one user and automatically distributed to all the people in the community, who agree the statement
Massimo Ferronato [epidemic]

21. Antimafia: Action creation
User describes the action with :
a statement
an optional comment
start time and duration
an action plug-in from a list of the available plug-ins
Massimo Ferronato [epidemic]

22. Antimafia: Action sharing
User saves the action
All nodes continuously search for new actions
The new action is found
The action definition is downloaded
If the user agrees the statement the plug-in is downloaded (if it’s not already present locally)
Massimo Ferronato [epidemic]

23. Antimafia: Action execution
At the set start time antimafia will run the action
After the set duration the action will stop
The action is saved as being executed
Massimo Ferronato [epidemic]

24. Massimo Ferronato [epidemic]
Eccentric The grid
Analyzing other uses of the grid not forecasted by his design
Improving dynamic grouping by common interests
Massimo Ferronato [epidemic]

25. Massimo Ferronato [epidemic]
[epidemic] is a network based on the alliance and cooperation of people working in sectors as diverse as art, computer science, anthropology, communication, history and economy
Massimo Ferronato [epidemic]

26. Massimo Ferronato [epidemic]
The goal of the [epidemiC] network is the identification, the analysis and the synthesis of phenomena that have raised due to the intrusion of traditional culture models by computer science based new models of cultural behavior.
[epidemic] has been active since 2000
Massimo Ferronato [epidemic]