Andy Carvin's Waste of Bandwidth

The "Can I Borrow Some Sugar" Analogy. Let's say you're in a rural community where the closest grocery store is far away. Rather than hiking to that store every time to buy ingredients for a cake, you and your neighbors agree to share sugar, flour and the like. So if you've got a recipe that requires sugar, you just check in with your neighbors and borrow what you need. They can do the same with you whenever they need something. And if you end up making some extra cakes or have leftover ingredients in the process, you share those things too.

The "Free Produce" Stand Analogy. The last time I went driving around rural Vermont, I noticed two things. First, lots of people would leave unwanted items - tools, used clothing and the like - in front of their homes with a "Free Stuff" sign next to them. If you drove by and saw something you needed, you could just take it. And when you were done with it, you could put it outside your home and do the same thing. Lots of homes also had produce stands based on the honor system. You'd pull over, grab whatever produce you needed, and stick an appropriate amount of money into a box. So I was thinking of an analogy somewhere in between these two scenarios: rather than heading off to get to that distant grocer, you could stop at your neighbor's house and grab a sample of whatever free produce they were growing. Similarly, you'd also share whatever produce you were growing on your property. That way, neighbors replenish each other as needed, taking the grocer out of the equation.

These seemed like okay analogies to me, but not perfect, so I put the question to my friends on Twitter. Eugene Chan quickly asked if I was familiar with The Amish Friendship Bread Analogy. In that one, a person makes a batch of fresh bread, but saves some yeast and dough as a starter. They take this starter and share it with their friends and neighbors, who in turn can produce their own bread, make new starter, and pass it along to others as well. The next thing you know, no one's going to Safeway anymore.

Meanwhile, Andrew Donoho took the Amish meme one step further and suggested The Barnraising Analogy. In that scenario, everyone in the community comes together with whatever tools and materials they each possess - wood, saws, hammers nails, etc - then work together to build a barn for someone. The recipients of the new barn are expected to reciprocate by helping out with supplies and manpower during the next barnraising, further the virtuous cycle.

Jen Simmons then offered up The Free Book Shelf Analogy. This is one I know well, since NPR has bookshelves of free books scattered throughout the building, given the huge number of review copies we receive from publishers. Anyone is welcome to peruse the shelves for a book. When they're done reading it, they can either return it, or find another book from their personal collection and donate it.

Eric Grant took the book analogy and concentrated it even further by sharing a blog post from Robin Good that might be described as a Book Assembly Party Analogy. In Robin's example, a group of people are sitting around a table with fragments of the same book. No one person has a complete party. They then begin to swap pages with each other, seeing whose individual pages pair up best with someone else's pages. Eventually, they've reorganize their disparate collection of pages into chapters, then chapters into nearly complete books. At that point, everyone around the table is happy, because even if there isn't one complete copy of the book, they've organized themselves in such a way that it's possible for them to share the chapters they've got and allow each other to read the full book.

One of my favorite analogies so far came from Meg Fowler, and might be called The Bottomless Candy Dish Analogy. You know what I'm talking about. There are some people in every office who always seem to have candy on their desks. No matter how greedy people get, they always seem to get replenished, particularly candy dishes in common areas. It's not because one person is constantly going out and restocking candy for everyone, though. It's because other people have some candy to spare (read: Halloween or Easter) and replenish the supply.

Ironically, there's one last analogy I should throw in now, and it's what I just did to write this post: The Ask Your Twitter Friends Analogy. There was something I needed - a good analogy to Bit Torrent - but I wasn't sure if I had it on hand myself. So I pinged my friends and colleagues via Twitter, and they in turn sent back to me a variety of ideas, some more complete than others. Though no single analogy ended up being perfect, taking them together as a whole, they accomplished what I was looking for: useful suggestions for explaining Bit Torrent to a five-year-old an NPR listener. And that information is something I'll always have and be able to share with others who may request it in the future, becoming a resource I can offer that can't be depleted. And by sharing all of these responses, other people will have access to that knowledge too, spreading it even further, with no one ever being able to stop it.

If that doesn't explain the essence of Bit Torrent, I'm not sure what will. But I'm open to further suggestions. :-) -andy