[p2p-research] Building Torrent Family Trees (Beta)

[Tomas Rawlings]

Does evolution apply to technology? A couple of people have suggested it 
does; most recently was W Brian Arthur writing in New Scientist. I also 
think it does and my PhD is trying to find the evidence for this idea. 
We are used to seeing family trees in biology. But how about for 
software? I think it is possible for us to look at family tree of forms 
of digital media too, so have been working on a method to build 
phylogenetic style family trees for BitTorrent software. The method is 
phylogenetic style rather than based abound the idea of torrents; The 
key reason that this is akin to the phylogenetic method is because the 
linkages are based on relationships of the source code (read: DNA) and 
not upon the meme-layer (read:idea). A similar exercise but around the 
meme-layer would produce very different results. Anyway this is the beta 
of my research and feedback and comments on this would be welcome!

http://blog.catbot.org/content/building-torrent-family-trees-beta

-- 
Tomas

-----------------------
Tomas Rawlings
Development Director, FluffyLogic Development Ltd.
web: www.fluffylogic.net
tel: 0117 9442233 
-
Also see:
blog on film & interweb: www.plugincinema.com
blog on p2p, media ecology & evolution: blog.catbot.org
tweet: www.twitter.com/arclightfire