Decentralization of systems and data, by means of P2P networks, may replace the concept of using servers to transmit data in the not-too-distant future.
Bitcoin is one example of decentralized technology but the concept that has exploded this year is the idea of creating Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAO) that run themselves. These DAO run on a virtual currency called Ether as a part of the Ethereum project.
Decentralized applications can be served worldwide without the possibility of any downtime, censorship, or fraud.
This is accomplished by moving our central systems and rules that currently experience occasional downtime, censorship of information and breaches in security, to a decentralized system where an attacker would need to infiltrate every machine in the network in order to carry out an attack.
Think world computer.
Centralized systems are limited to their central locations and therefor have limited points of failure. This is a bad thing because if any of these points of failure are compromised the entire system can be compromised as well.
Decentralized technologies run on a much larger scale than central systems and this makes it much more difficult for an attacker to compromise the entire system.
By turning a central location into many decentralized locations we could potentially eliminate all of the risk involved within that system. And that is cool!
To learn more about the Ethereum Project checke out: https://Ethereum.org