Positivity: The Internet’s New Shortcut

I normally resist putting on-the-horizon tech developments into Positivity, because so many are highly speculative and don’t pan out. I believe this one is far enough along, and it implications far-reaching enough (the e-mail alert for the article says that this “faster way of moving data could end the debate over net neutrality”), that something will surely come of it, even if not in the area described below. Thus it merits notice now : 08.21.08, 6:00 AM ET The Internet, it turns out, may have room enough for everyone. Even the most bandwidth-hogging digital pirates. That, at least, is the hope of two professors from the University of Washington and Yale University. They plan to present research at a conference in Seattle on Thursday describing a new and speedier way to send data across the Internet. Their technique, based on an algorithm they call P4P, could eventually offer a less controversial version of peer-to-peer file sharing, a practice that...