I am confused by the above statements. What is a "fetch-it" bias?
Are you making a distinction between message passing between a
client(consumer)<->server(producer) (asynchronous
interaction) as opposed to a client<->client, (synchronous interaction)?
Peer-to-peer interaction is very useful in environments such as engineering,
R&D, problem-solving essentially, where a dialogue is essential and
exchange is more like rapid-fire. But it creates anarchy in terms of
organizational communications as there is not much structure in the process.
The producer-consumer model is an all pervasive model and it's one
organizations want to see (at least the ones I interacted with) in
domains such as technical documentation, sales and marketing information
and transactions with clients and other collaborators (EDI) because it
gives them control.
You must remember that CSCW while very popular in terms of research
with respect to things like collaborative editing etc., has not made
any inroads in terms of organizational applications as there is often
no control or filter on the information posted. The issue is not at a
technological one but more of a social one.
My point is that we have not even scratched the surface of the
network publishing model in terms of applications. We can effectively
subsume the on-demand publishing (video on-demand, games on-demand etc.)
applications very easily in this model. And, that is one of the reasons
why it is so popular.
True that the WWW initially was meant to do other things but we have
to go with what the customer wants or may want in the future.
-- Ravi