Good things are often distributed. You were able to find this blog page quickly because DNS is distributed. The internet itself is by nature distributed. The role of editing articles in Wikipedia is distributed, and it is for my purposes the best source of information online.
Some distributed things are also decentralized. Take for example, BitTorrent. Just last week, I was able to download 3 gigabytes of my favorite linux distro within an hour. The ‘torrent file’ that bootstrapped my download was hosted on a central tracker server, but it did not have to reside in any one server.
I am interested in decentralized P2P systems. What is necessary to make decentralized services robust, secure, anonymous, and responsive? What are the characteristics of services that could do well as decentralized services? For example, will search engines become decentralized? I mean, will Google search or Yahoo search ever be replaced by a decentralized P2P service that is robust to spoofing, responsive, anonymous, and ad-free? I believe search and many other services can become decentralized and thus become better than the centralized counterparts; it’s just a matter finding the right implementation to satisfy all the indepedent concerns.
On a slight tangent, here is a search service that integrates user contribution. Check out my idea swicki. I’m still experimenting with it, so please feel free to join in and or comment about it here.
ideas under construction 