The ramifications are profound. One day, individuals may no longer need permission to access their credit card, tax, or Social Security records from companies, banks, or the government. If the government or bank wants the data, it'll have to obtain your permission, not vice versa. He's an investor in a new file-sharing company called Apple Soup, started by Napster cofounder Bill Bales. He's worried that if peer to peer catches on, there'll be less demand for central storage companies like Exodus.
Wholesale changes are years away.
But it's clear the idea has tremendous promise. Calif. Using peer to peer to reliably harness unused computing power is getting particular attention. Though Americans may stare at their computer screens a lot, in truth they don't tap much of the machine's processing power. That adds up to a lot of unused resources. Intel has been sharing processing power within the company for 10 years, having scrapped its mainframes in 1995.