When bittorrent was released, I saw the technological aspects as groundbreaking, thinking it would be repurposed for much more than ISO downloads and mass media distribution. How did the technology not become a more popular way of distributing via crowdsourcing large community datasets, such as openstreetmaps, or something like distribution of Android rom updates, when the costs of distribution are so expensive?
I was a prolific user of BitTorrent early, and I knew very few people who used it, let alone understood the basics of it. Now it seems like arcane knowledge, young folks have no idea. This is just my IRL experience though.