Before you ask the question…

Does peer-to-peer have a future?

If P2P networking is so great for users why not use it as the basis for the Internet 30 years in the future?  

In the early 1990s the challenges were cost and capacity.  A lack of computing power and storage space is the first problem. The P2P Internet was hosted on computers and storage at Universtities and Government research labs.  Then as now, these groups are starved for funding so if the Internet was going to grow they were not going to foot the bill.

The second problem was the telephone companies. When I was surfing the Internet from my basement in Regina, Saskatchewan in 1982 I was one of only 20 people to be on the Internet at any one time because Compuserve had only 20 dial up numbers in the phone book. P2P connection via modem required a dedicated phone line. No way was any telephone company going to build our 2.3 billion phone lines just so Mark Zuckerberg could grow Facebook to 2.3 billion users.

Luckily the present provides a solution, the Smart Phone. With ubiquitous 4G, 5G or wireless connections available 24/7 and a server with almost unlimited storage in each of our pockets, there is no excuse not to go back to the past and develop a solution for the furture giving security and control to the user.  Rather than one large Cloud with 2.3 billion members how about 2.3 billion individual mini clouds all connected together in a network? 

The solution to the Cloud problem must give the average Internet user confidence that their data is secure and under their control. The solution must also provide a secure and private infrastructure that accommodates mobility and the low-latency services we have come to expect from mainstream communication and social-based solutions.

The solution is a P2P network where each user has their own secure discreet connection that they can disable or edit at anytime. Users must store and control their own data on their own devices and connections between users must be encrypted at the device level ensuring that nothing makes it through to any user unless they agree to it first.