Internet Systematics

Computational Science and Internet Systematics

2012-02-07T06:41:00.000-08:00

Let me prologue this post by stating that my degree (1983) from St.Andrews University is in Computational Science.

In previous post titled John's Apocalypse I expressed a "eureka moment" concerning my goal of
Understanding Networking. I had to see Jon Crowcrof's review of John Day's book that states the book shows us (Internauts) how we arrived to the present state of the Net as a criterion of validity and analyzed my response.

John Day constructs an architecture which elucidates the basic concepts of Networking (address, name, directory, application) that the current running architecture of Internet failed to concentrate systematically in order to avoid hasty patching and ad-hoc solutions. The cause of the big problems: scaling, performance, security, mobility.

So, for some time I thought that the journey starting at around the end of 80s is almost finishing and I should be getting in line to co-march with RNA, PNA, RINA.

But ...

recently I have come across a new area of work called Computational Thinking which sheds new light in my work both to the grand problem "Understanding Networking"(late of 90s) and to the older problem "New Computing paradigm" (beginning of 80s) that my research degree hooked me into.

In this blog I use terms such as Meta-artificial, Meta-mechanical process, Internet Systematics, network theory (NET8) etc but one idea stands out which says that I am not quite sure about the actual logic of the corpus of ideas, concepts, schemes, research-notes etc that I have produced so far.

Initially I thought I have a "Network theory" (*) that tells fundamental things about the Net.

Next working further down this line and locating on my radar "Knowledge communication as Killer application on the Internet" I thought that since my base is Turchin's systems approach then my set of knowledge better be named "Internet Systematics".

Of course the set itself became an object of investigation, soon enough.

In addition,

John Day's RINA excludes Application Architecture and my NET8 model wants to ponder about social networking for example. What does it mean to have billion of minds thinking closer ? A new automation quantum is being cooked perhaps. I conclude that although I appreciate RINA deeply I cannot stop there, there has been some thinking that escapes RINA's lid.

Well, while thinking along these lines I came across Jeannette Wing's vision called Computational Thinking and quickly I realize there is common ground, she thinks about automating abstractions, about scaling computing education, about general concepts related to computing that engender innovation and problem solving.

Let me finish this note by quoting this blog's definition:

This blog is working out a picture of the evolving Net, it tries to formulate basic concepts that explain the nature of this global machine & its applications in contemporary Society. It tries to comprehend the ongoing (net) construction process by examining analogies drawn from the process that built its ancestor entities: the computer, the operating system, the programming language and the global telekom

Stay tuned...

(*) Network theory is concepts such as Automation Quantum, Virtual Von Neumann Machine, Meta-mechanical transitions (pls see older posts)

Network Theory

2011-01-26T07:17:00.000-08:00

Network Theory has been the holy grail of the activity described in this blog. I coined the term NET8 (pronounced Net Theta) to designate this research
around 1998.

Meta-artificial is the name of this blog-site coined as soon as I became aware that my research about Net modeling was getting somewhere.

I picked the word "meta" to indicate the vision that the Net (as we say the Computer of Alan Turing) gives rise to a new kind of
Artificial Intelligence. I thought so being influenced by the work of V.F.Turchin under the term Metacomputing since the Turing/Von Neumann Computer gave rise to the vision of A.I.

Surely, there is a confusion with these terms. Also, I coined the term Internet Systematics which became the name of this blog-site because I thought of it as my first research result. It signaled the discovery of a systems approach to modeling the Net, a goal I set to solve being confronted in late 80s by two competing network technologies the OSI and the TCP/IP (I was the national rep in EU's COSINE and RARE activities in Networking).

I began the research problem to look for principles very similar to what John Day calls Patterns in Network Architecture - a return to fundamentals but took a different path because my initial conditions were very different as I lacked networking experience. My quest for fundamentals did not have the solid ground he was standing upon. My statement of the problem was fixed as a by product of my work in Declarative Programming (or Functional or Applicative or ..) otherwise it would be a total nonsense. I said to myself I used DP to understand what
a Programming Language is (via Denotational Semantics) why not pursue the same course to understand
the Net (this is a very linear version of the thinking process that took place over a long period).

But networking experience gradually accumulated with me as I was involved in large scale Network building projects and joined the global community of Internet developers (for example the RIPE community, the CERN community, the EBONE community etc) participating in network working groups.

After several years of participatory observation I managed to build a Model of Networking which I describe by the term Virtual Von Neumann Recursive Architecture - VVNRA (the term recursive replaced my initial term "sequence" or "chained" under Day's influence) motivated by the need to understand the "whole beast" I was handling.

The VVNRA result was a kind of dead-end did not know how to discuss it with the community, which community ? the engineers, the computer scientists ? the general systems people ? the power users ?.

I did try with a professor, talked some researchers in my work but had no luck (perhaps did not
pursue it properly).

I concluded that the results I had was some kind of pattern, an evolution pattern of the Net. One day googling with the terms "pattern" "architecture" "internet" I found
John Day's RINA (note initially his term was PNA - Patterns in Net Architecture) it provided legitimization for my usage of the concept of recursion, I re-called my 1999 result on the issue of Net modeling.

The same can be said about the concept of Virtualization a key feature of my Model above. In recent times we all know the importance this concept has for Network developments. At the time again I locate it as something vital that stemmed from the way the Net worked. I did not move any further than the assurance that I had constructed a Picture for the Net (see posts of earlier years here).

A theory needs predictions and I made some no doubt (for example the early detection of the importance of multimedia, the early WWW success, the information collection as killer Net application.

An important result was the mapping of Network's evolution phases (see older posting here)
detecting the Strowger Switch
as the initial phase along with the principle of the Quantum of Automation (embodying automation, see older postings in this blog).

In fact the model Virtual Von Neumann Recursive Architecture resulted as an abstraction over the above evolution path.

John Day in his analysis about the fundamentals cames to IPC - Inter-Process Communication (*)
in fact he talks about Layered IPC where the lowest layer is the wires.

In the diagram above APPL 1 is one application wishing to communicate with
another one APPL 2 using a facility IPC. In fact the Layer APPL
is very like the Layer IPC, just processes talking to each other.
So one recursive layer that unfolds with respect to scope, bandwidth, QoS:

IPC n over IPC n-1 over IPC over n-2 over ....

This is very similar to mine:

VVNRA n embedded over VVNRA n-1 embedded over VVNRA n-2 embedded over ....

I thought of this in 1999, the Net at phase N-1 becomes the
vBUS for the Net at phase N.

How come ?

Think the Net prior to DNS with manual naming with ftp HOSTS.txt,
from NIC and so on (see older posting).

So DNS is the introduction of some automation to the Net,

and what is automation ? well the Turing machine thing ?

Can I model onto it ?

Difficult. So move on to next near thing the "Neumann/Turing design".

Let me make it an abstract concept, as the diagram CPU-BUS-MEM shows.

Can I map ? Well let's see:

A Quantum of Automation occurs with DNS, which seems to form a Virtual Von Neumann Architecture where running the bind code etc is the vCPU loaded with this code,
the ZONE servers are its v MEM) and its vBUS is the existing Net used to
propagate the new phase.

Most Net advances fit this pattern going back to the manual switching
rooms automated by Mr. Strownger for the specific purpose of throwing out
the intermediaries, namely the phone ladies that stole his business away.

BGP Autonomous systems did a similar task for core routing.

MIME offered Multimedia to Email,

ARCHIE offered Networked Resources (via anon FTP)

WWW improved the "FTP + multimedia" manual facility and so on.

My diagram recurses over the BUS of the VN - architecture:

(*)Bob Metcalf 1972 : Networking is IPC,

John's apocalypse

2009-05-03T23:55:00.000-07:00

Several years ago (20?), I coined the term NET8 (pronoounced "Net theta" to mean network theory, later mutated to INTERNET SYSTEMATICS as I became more profficient with Metasystem Transition (+). this is how I perceived my attempt to understand the emerging the Net, that I happened to confront as a Computer Scientist in mid 80's (I blog my learning path slowly). Previous postings here indicate how the associated thinking developed along the practical task of building operational networks.

A couple of years ago, I read a paper by David Turner (my mentor into Functional Programming) on the significance of the theory of computing; the works initiated by Alonzo Church and Alan Turing that enable us to avoid the babel of Intel-computing vs Motorola-computing and Java-computing vs C-computing by leading us to a convergence of the corresponding concepts.

This somehow supported a further unfolding of my "naive" NET8 plan (a quest for fundamentals in computer networks).

A recent book by John Day "Patterns of Network Architecure" in 2008 by prentice hall came just in time that I was wandering about my next step.

First thing it does for me:

is to fill the gap to appreciate the case of OSI (due to my lack of the necessary experience and all round factual data concerning OSI). I know now that the "harm" I detected is confined to the OSI protocols but the OSI model is undeniably "good", for example the first to start the thread of separating the Application from the Protocol.

It also brought memories of MINITEL, CYCLADES, TRANSPAC, TELMAT SM90 my French initial-connection to Networking (due to Nicolas Malagardis of IRIA, INRIA).

It also gave me an immensely powerful insight to distinguish Engineering things from Science ones. I discovered many common things with the book like "General Systems Theory" (von Forester for John Day and Valentin Turchin in my case).

Now I can understand that nothing beats experience, I am a very simple seer on the same direction for the past 20 years as "seeking patterns" that understand the Network in Computer Science terms but I stayed at the periphery of the WITI problem (another coinage from me What Is The Internet) I never thought that the whole Net thing we have needs replacing. I somehow thought that the "onion layers" (an OS concept !) of the evolutionary attached Quanta of Automation (see previous postings) were the fittest that survived, optimal in the given circumstances for the Network ecology. John Day brings the realities that point to "quick fixes" (*) like the infamous NAT (Network Address Translation)

John Day is master and a seer (his term), he states:
In Computer Science we build what we measure

he sees too much Engineering and little if any Science on the Internet phenomenon because network things worked "off-the-shelf" from the start of the ARPANET unfinished Demo. There have been opportunities to rectify the situation but the inertia of success, vested interests and mainly lack of knowledge in the wider IETF community (!!!), "group-thinking can be dangerous" warns John Day, as an example he points to CNLS. (I did underline its prospects as a reporter in 1994 but only by accident and influenced by MTR's (M.Rose) ISODE package).

I could not have given such a focus to my research (my proud achievement in 1994 about "OSI can be harmful" apparently only tells half the truth). John Day says he did not even plan for a book but only for stock taking about lessons he had gained until then (2007-8) in order to understand Network independant of politics, religion and constrain of technology (i.e. in Science terms). Gradually he saw patterns forming that he worked out how to yield them.

In my case I thought of "theory" (again naively of course as I was extracting abstractions, not avoiding embarassment at times) because the Science style of Declarative Programming concepts conditioned my participatory observation. The above diagram shows a pattern I saw related to Network architecture, as an early attempt to codify my thoughts.

I will get to a comparative consideration between RNA (RINA) and NET8 but the most important issue that my mind is on the 6th in Boston where the PSOC meets (Louis Pouzin society, he invented datagrams), here is a note concerning how to clean slate the Net.

I wonder how many colleagues in Greece and Europe know that datagram is a French doing ? (pls leave a note if you can). In fact the French PTT (^) destroyed
CYCLADES the first datagram network !!! and developed TRANSPAC instead. I built the first
X.25 node link at 4.8K to it for Greece in 1987 collaborating with the Greek PTT (OTE).

I could not understand some negative comments the book got in Farber's list and waited for clarification. The list runs on a very tight self-controlled spirit so nothing came. But happily the Internet channel is amazing (Internet Protocol Journal) Jon Crowcroft of UCL wrote a very good review of the book for example he writes:

I found the book extremely readable and enjoyable, and although I might argue with some of the opinions in the book, I think that this is just more evidence that I should recommend the book to anyone interested in knowing why we are where we are in networking, and being better informed about where we should go next.

So my new discovery got a validation. I have followed such a course all along the NET8 path ie waiting for "proofs" because I realise my weak position to handle such
a big issue as Network Theory. This is why at times a give some sort of thumbs up sign to myself for encouragement.

(+) I found MST as a way out to explain to myself the fact that Functional/Applicative/Declarative model of computing did not conquer the world, as I had finished my research slot in that area. So I was looking for "killer aplications environments" to utilize the great works that C.Strachey had initiated. When I met ASN.1 (also LOTOS for a while) having entered networking for adventure in the mean time, it started ticking in the back of my mind that "the Net is a new kind of machine (SUN microsystems declared the infamous Net is the Computer phrase) that F/A/D model can be applied to". Next tick was with Active Networks of Farber so joined his previous IP maillist (F/A/D means Functional/Applicative/Declarative), the best spin-off of my Marco Polo like journey. Finally, the puzzle is solved this is why I use the title apocalypse above, Declarative networking exloits the separation of What from the How of protocol design. The "What" brings policy issues the "How" brings mechanism. So TCP and UDP for example in terms of "How" are the same protocol, in terms of "What" are different specification policies. Layering should shift 90 degrees left to separate things horizontally because fundamentally there is only one layer that recurses across different scope, bandwidth demands etc, John Day says. But recursion (ie Kurt Goedel's recursive functions) is the beginning of Computing, the ultimate of fundamentals. I went as far back (with my Automation Quantum as a fundamental concept of a model for the Net) to Turing Machine, so it is not a bad go I guess for an Net newbie
in 1999. Further, my VVNA - Virtual Von Neumann Architecture
does use the idea of a recursive phase in Net's evolution path (please see previous postings otherwise I seem cryptic here, in any case do query me ...).

(*) the phrase from BEATLES'LP Sergeant Pepper "I am fixing a hole where the rains gets in and stops my mind from wandering ..." is appropriate to the situation

(^) a peer to our greek OTE, I help plant ISP OTENET there in 1995 under the belief "first we take Manhattan from within", as the L.Cohen' song goes.

Internet evolution problem

2009-04-03T06:30:00.000-07:00

I would like to say that Internet systematics (IS), as a framework of ideas about the nature of Network, set the controls to the issue of Internet evolution quite early in its course of unfolding.

Certainly IS was not influenced by the problems that have emerged over the good years of its
tremendous growth (scaling, multimedia, informational resources, routing, security) but only
from my need to understand its fundamentals. I concentrated on its whole system aspects because this was the only available paradigm I possessed (distributed computing as implementation of Functional Programming (FP) ) at the time of my job assignment (+).

Getting into development tasks and community participation real experience gradually was acquired and provided the real ground to walk on.

The whole system approach (aka macroscopic model) triggered the evolution cognitive alarm. Turchin's MSTT provided the reference model to try to use as a modeling mechanism.

The facinating thing with MSTT was that it made me understand the problem of why the PC made the scene instead of the LISP machine (*) (build by Thinking Machines inc.) but most important it gave me a stairway to start ascending towards the idea of "network theory". I coined the name "NET8 - Net theta)" to signal the intention.

It has been some time now that grand-scale evolution, not just the next killer appl that evolves the Network but the whole wide system scale change/replacement/re-design is stated as a problem. No doubt the following gathering will produce some interesting thread:

Reinventing the Internet - Can We and How Would We?

It has been said that no one engineered the Internet; rather it was cobbled together over time to address real and emerging needs. That cobbling built on the work of those who laid the foundations and necessarily required compromises to maintain compatibility. This panel will explore the hard problems challenging the Internet as we know it today, what we might do differently and how best to realize the next evolution of the Internet. The panelists have been asked to address what they see as the security challenges that must be addressed to ensure the continued viability of the Internet and how best to respond to those challenges.

Moderator: David Farber, Distinguished Career Professor of Computer Science and Public Policy

Panelists: Steve Crocker, CEO of Shinkuro, Inc.
Larry Roberts, Chairman of Anagran, Inc.
Paul Mockapetris, Chief Scientist and Chairman of the Board at Nominum, Inc.
Guru Parulkar, Executive Director of the Clean Slate Internet Design Program and Consulting

(*) I started my research on FP from G.Steele's student paper about parallel garbage collection.

web science on ACM

2009-02-06T10:27:00.000-08:00

I did notice the ressemblance between "web science" and "internet systematics" in a post here on FEB 2007, I have just noticed a more developed version by the same authors on a recent ACM publication. It is titled Web science: an inter-disciplinary approach to understanding the web. The text on the front of the publication as well as the graphic indicate to me at least that the two terms are amazingly close. I read:

...to model the web as a whole, keep it growing and undestand it as continuing social impact. A SYSTEMS APPROACH (cap by me) in the sense of "systems biology" is needed if we are to be able to understand and engineer the future web.

I will study the article and write about "internet systematics" to the authors,I hope that Sir Tim Berners-Lee will remember our co-existence in the NIR/USIS working group report. I will also confess that I did not follow the path he offerred, unlike colleague Peter Flynn because I chose to sort-out the first batch of CISCO routers in Greece (1 AGS, 2 MGS, 4 IGS) , thinking that being a software person there was time to catch-up. In fact I did forecast in 1992 to ARIADNE NOC personnel the success of WWW over GOPHER although that latter was king with 3000 % growth rate agaist WWW's 300 % (measured on NSFNET)

but global devs flew fast, I never made it to the devs team !

(TBC)

intra-disciplinary in systems thinking

2008-12-11T09:51:00.000-08:00

In previous postings I use the term Internet Systematics to denote an approach very similar to Systems Thinking as given by the full review of the field by C.Francois. A comment on previous posting underlined the problem what is a systems approach ?

George Adamopoulos, the constant postmaster (*) located a relevant paper
a very welcoming comment that has me going on this "systems" direction.

The title was "A bootstrap is cooking" signaling the feeling that a legitimization of the work is on the way. I am close but not quite there. How can you express something to Systemists that I am not certified in their full language versus how to introduce Systems thinking to Networkers without going into details that do not interest them for sure adn for what purpose ?

The best I have done so far is the book The phenomenon of Science a really simple introduction though is using the term cybernetics. But my real work is almost a redux of the book, for example Automation Quantum or Network Transition instead of Turchin's Metasystem Transition (see wikipedia) so it will be to talk about two evolutionary cases.

Systems, General Systems, Cybernetics is really a inter-disciplinary approach applied across Science fields like Biology, Economy etc.

Internet Systematics (or Systemics) seems to constitute an intra-discipline systems approach applied across the complexity layers of the Network phenomenon. Hum ?

Googling the term takes to a Phd program in MIT !

Intra-disciplinary knowledge areas

The intradisciplinary computing knowledge areas are organized into the three I's: interaction, informatics, and infrastructure.

Interaction refers to topics related to the combined action of two or more entities (human or computational) that both affect one another and work together when facilitated by technology. It in turn encompasses several subtopics relating to how people and technology interact and interface.

Informatics is the study of computational/algorithmic techniques applied to the management and understanding of data-intensive systems. It focuses on the capture, storage, processing, analysis, and interpretation of data. Topics include primarily algorithms, complexity, and discovery informatics.

infrastructure comprises aspects primarily related to hardware, software (both system software and applications), communications technology, and their integration with computing systems through applications. The focus is on the best organization of these elements to provide optimal architectural solutions. It includes, on the hardware side, system-level design (e.g., for system-on-a-chip solutions) and their building block components. On the software side, it covers all aspects of systems and applications software development, including specification and design languages and standards; validation and prototyping, and multi-dimensional Quality-of-Service management; software product lines, model-driven architectures, component-based development, and domain-specific languages; and product estimation, tracking, and oversight. The communications subtopic includes sensor networks and protocols, as well as active networks, wireless networks, mobile networks, configurable networks, and high speed networks as well as network security and privacy, quality of service, reliability, service discovery, and integration and interworking across heterogeneous networks. At the system level there are issues related to conformance and certification; system dependability, fault tolerance, verifiable adaptability, and reconfigurable systems; and real-time, self-adaptive, self-organizing, and autonomic systems.

(*) Constant Gardener, is a John Le Carre recent title that I think best describes Adamo's consistent attention to Network Administration, a noble profession and discipline still out of the radar of many Universities and Research Centers.

A bootstrap is cooking

2008-12-08T03:29:00.000-08:00

I have just discovered a 1999 paper by C.Francois (a systemist from Argentina) titled Systemics and Cybernetics in Historical perspective. It begins by stating that Systems Thinking (ST) is an on-going process for over 100 years. It elaborates a list of authors and contributions to an evolving conceptual framework. He also mentions some concept of meta-system, I need to check the definition and how it relates to the definition used by Turchin and adopted here.
One aspect of the adaptation is the pivotal concept of Meta-system transition here becomes Network transition (aka Automation Quantum)

But the most important "correlation" to the on-going works of Meta-Artificial blogged here, is the idea that it is not just me (*) that applies System thinking but big developments like McCarthy's LISP, Codd's Relational computing and so on also incorporate Systems thinking. It is the macroscopic feature of ST that characterizes its mode, for example in LISP is the abstraction of low level details like memory issues and machine details. It is also the mathematical framework brought into programming quite a large scale conceptual armory deployed. Also ideas such as "program as data" that need an architectural shift of the basic reference system in use (classic programming - imperative programming).

It is a pity that Francois does not cite Turchin, perhaps 10 years after his publication I may suggest to him an update but clearly his review does help me realize the interdisciplinary character that in my case takes a particular meaning, no doubt it can operate across the per-layer disciplines of the Network (I guess I am in err in thinking WWW - the application layer- is a different discipline than say TCP/IP layer of engineering and queuing theory mathematics. The formation of orgs such as W3C and OASIS also underline the argument.

Also, the paper provides a "handle" to an introduction to the theme Internet Systematics that is more close to its own origins than the approach "next to ai phase" developed along the way sometime later.

I am particularly happy to see Kevin Kelly's definition of the technium (I need to get familiar with his works, although I came across to him in the days of Wired mag at least 10 years ago, and communicate to seek and give comment) where Kelly targets the concept of Global Brain.

Also interesting thought is that I just received a ping on TWINE from Laylor about GB.

(*) originally in the field of Functional Programming and then to the field of Computer Networking (note that -ing indicates a dynamic view)

metasystem transition

2008-12-04T07:57:00.000-08:00

Part of the current focus of meta-artificial

concerns SNS (social network software/service) as the next transition to expect.

The following posting also a shared idea on twine refers to metasystem transition re-casting Turchin's vision.

All previous postings since 2005 refer to various aspects of associating metasystem transition
to the evolution of the global internet machine. The latter is not just hardware, software or even communications. What is it ?

I found Turchin's concept of meta-mechanical-process used in his paper

"A constructive interpretation of the full set theory", Journal of Symbolic Logic, 52, pp.172-201, 1987

where he uses this term to describe a process initiated by a computer that includes associated user activity.

This concept helps me assume the existence of a reality which is a joint man-machine enterprise.

So, I interpret Net advances such as the introduction of automatic naming (aka DNS) replacing the manual distributed naming procedure as a kind of metasystem transition over the above man-machine enterprise.

An isomorphic model about Internet

2008-10-13T07:32:00.000-07:00

By model I mean a package of ideas, definitions and concepts useful to do various things but mainly forecast. Another word for it is Knowledge something similar, Turchin uses the definition cybernetic knowledge to be a self-sustaining model. Whoever human or machine possess it then it can go about making predictions about this or another aspect of the modeled entity.

When I was getting an introductory course in Pure Mathematics at Essex University I felt really excited and impressed by concepts like isomorphism between Sets, Groups, Function Spaces etc these generic ideas that enabled us to reason about so many things in the world that surrounds us.

In one of my introductory courses at Advanced Programming at St. Andrews, the statement we model the world with software made me even more curious to discover its foundations from the fascinating software examples of David Turner (SASL interpreter in BCPL, Combinatory Abstact machine in C, self-printing-program-script, etc). For example the SASL model of computation was more friendly for understanding the nature of algorithms than the BASIC model I learned at Hastings College the previous years (1).

Vint Cerf, the co-creatior of Internet's basic software (aka TCP/IP) has stated we put onto Internet whatever we have accomplished thus associating Internet and real world processes is a valid proposition.

In The COOK REPORT on the Internet Protocol November issue 2008, Cook reports on the line of work started by Tom Vest that attempts to relate the Addressing (sub)componet of Internet (2) across that of Macroeconomics. It is a MoE - Medium of Exchange concludes Tom' analysis and ressembles IPv4 addresses with the Gold standard of the old economies. I will spent a lot more with this material and come back with full commentary but for the time being I want to say

Eureka !

This is what I have been doing a paradigm to think about Internet evolution, an isomorphic model of Internet structure, function and working patterns. My target Domain has been not Macroeconomics but Cybernetics/General Systems, the language of MSTT (3) of Turchin.

(1) by logging remotely with a teletype to a mainframe in US linked by Tymnet over the Atlantic (undersea cable or satellite).

(2) the system includes Addresses, ISPs, BGP4, Policy Routing, CIDR

(3) MSTT is Metasystem Transition Theory (wikipedia) , an evolutionary inter-disciplinary scheme unifying Physical and Spiritual phenomena.

one prediction against GOPHER

2008-09-17T08:12:00.000-07:00

The following dialog between veterans of Arpanet/Internet is a "proof" that my thinking about the "systemic" issues concerning the Net around the same time (1990) had a sound basis and it was a legitimate problem to think about. For example, using my "model" of the Net,I made the same observation about "gopher", as the veteran.

GOPHER was an interesting system, I got to know it from being a member of the RARE working group on NIR - networked information resources since 1988.
I checked the stats on NSFNET from ISOC Journal "OnTheInternet",
it had very simple interface but the case of "WWW" seemed more promising. As Crocker says
"multimedia is one feature that gopher lacked but soon it obtained such a module".

My "macroscope" focused on the automation features of WWW like its general scheme

protocol://DNShost:Port/FileSystem

a scheme that promised scaling power, other strong features were
the algebraic power of HTML to program resources and later the SGI
mechanism for gatewaying to on-line services. All these made it, in my humble opinion,
an unbeatable recipe.

In fact I did state this publicly to colleagues in the NOC of ARIADNE
my work place at the time.

> From: Jim Thompson
...

>> Also the word "gopher" appears nowhere in the timeline, although for a

>> couple of years it WAS the Internet...
>
> No, it wasn't.

While the question of how users perceive(d) the Internet can always get bogged down in the definition of users, metrics, or period of time, the role of gopher was fundamental.

The Arpanet/Internet lived with "anonymous" FTP as its public publishing method for 15 years. As the Internet approached mass- market scale, a better mechanism was needed and various folk experimented with different approaches. For nearly 5 years, gopher dominated.

In 1990, I was giving a half-day Internet introduction to some phone company folk, as part of a week-long seminar at CMU. I included a gopher demonstration, letting the class make selection choices, as we navigated from a page that divided the world into regions, until we finally got down to a page for the Wellington New Zealand Town Council and found a pointer to the Town Council minutes.

At that moment, I finally understood how big an impact the Internet would have. A non-technical group was publishing mundane, non- technical information for non-technical use. If they were doing that then, everyone else would too. And by "everyone" I realized it would be literially everyone in the world.

As the Web started to gain traction later, there was some question which of the two technologies would win. Gopher was far easier to publish, since it took any ol' text file, whereas the Web required specially-created files. On the other hand, the Web was multi-media and it let you give useful information to users with every key-click. With gopher, useful information was only at the leaves, and not the intermediate navigation nodes. No embedded links.

d/
--

Dave Crocker
Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net

Networking-as-evolution

2008-07-22T05:32:00.000-07:00

A study about the prospects of Agent Technology (part of EU IST research)
seems to attempt a similar approach as our meta-artificial
does (sorry but you need to read back to 2005 :-( ).

It is hosted on a site concerned with roadmapping
the evolution of things to come, in a holistic manner, it
goes several years back to review and assess the progress
of object versus the agent stage of technology. It
entagles events such as Internet and Autonomic Computing
in its overall assessment.

Let's read a piece from the executive summary:

In its brief history, computing has enjoyed several different metaphors for the notion of
computation. From the time of Charles Babbage in the nineteenth century until the mid-
1960s, most people thought of computation as calculation, or operations undertaken
on numbers. With widespread digital storage and manipulation of non-numerical
information from the 1960s onwards, computation was re-conceptualised more generally
as information processing, or operations on text, audio or video data. With the growth
of the Internet and the World Wide Web over the last ﬁfteen years, we have reached a
position where a new metaphor for computation is required: computation as interaction.
In this metaphor, computing is something that happens by and through communication
between computational entities. In the current radical reconceptualisation of computing,
the network is the computer, to coin a phrase.
In this new metaphor, computing is an activity that is inherently social, rather than solitary,
leading to new ways of conceiving, designing, developing and managing computational
systems. One example of the inﬂuence of this viewpoint is the emerging model of software
as a service, for example in service-oriented architectures. In this model, applications are no
longer monolithic, functioning on one machine (for single user applications), or distributed
applications managed by a single organisation (such as today’s Intranet applications),
but instead are societies of components.

So, we see the similarities are that it calls for a reconceptualization of computing underling the idea of the network is the computer , a distingushed common concept between us,
(it is in absolute error though by claiming the coining of the infamous phrase above as SUN microsystems trademarks here !!!).

Also, we see it unifies the range of its analysis covering both Internet and the Web but most
noticable is the reference to computing-as-interaction , matching our previous posting.

It also brings in, the concept of Service Oriented Architecture, a development which
is under our macroscope (similar to O'Reilly's radar) but has not made it to this blog yet.

In the study's terminology our meta-artificial could be named as the Evolution
of Communicating Computational Entities.

I am quite surprised to notice that this 100+ page study above produced under the goal to push the taking-up of agent technology comes to the same more or less conclusion as I did, some years ago (blog starts 2005) namely to re-establish a reference model for Internet and Web computing.

Now, one would notice that my own research premiss was to understand the entity Net as a kind of new computing paradigm (*) since paradigm seeking was my goal in previous research life. Correspondingly, the study above aims for massive AI adoption, in the form of Agent Technology arrives at the point to consider such an idea (the new paradigm) as the starting point for progressing on the AI front applied to the present state of things (Internet, WWW etc).

So the clue of this posting is a series of equations (M=A=N):

Meta-artificial is
An evolutionary map of computing-as-interaction is
Networking-as-evolution

(*) I coined the term meta-artificial intelligence borrowing from Tuchin's concept of meta-mechanical process (+) mixing history and terminology since Turchin's approach does target a roadmap to AI but mainly helped my concept construction to understand the Net-as -evolution.

(+) meta-mechanical process maintained by the computing that includes user interaction, so real computing for Turchin is more general case than computing by an autonomous machine in isolation as defined by the Turing machine.

(TBC)

Elements of interaction

2008-03-07T05:26:00.000-08:00

I have in the past identified the developments of Web Science in a previous posting. Recently, I came across the following position paper by R.Milner in the workshop about semantic web directed by Hendler in 2005. There many things that I want to comment about but for the time being, I pick as the most important ones its reference to the term Computing-as-interaction and the statement it makes about describing events and activities taking place over the web.
The paper introduces a three-layered scheme, originating from H.Simon's Theories of the Artificial, that can be used as a reference model to successfully describe activities such as "web-clicks".
I dare say, I started in late 80s something similar, equipped with much weaker armoury, the idea to understand the Net in terms of being an evolving computing entity. My prime concern was to locate some basic concepts at first and later to map upon them the emergence of Net advances. So, I consider the position paper above as a kind of validation of my approach .

Now it is for the benefit of fixing the semantic web requirements, back then it was fixing my comprehension needs, modulated to think "holistically" about computing artefacts in general, hence I did the same about the Net itself. This way of thinking owes alot to the great works of D. Turner that I became familiar with in late 70s and later due to a very similar exploration of computing paradigms, pursued by V. Turchin (aka Russian-LISP inventor). I discovered it while on functional programming in early 80s. I tookit up more seriously as I entered Networking in late 80s. I think it was Steve Kille (X.500 isode) mentioning ASN.1(+) that made me apply Turchin logic (evolutionary functional programming) to the problem of developing an undertanding
about the Network.
The quantum of automation (QofA) owes a lot to combinators (#) each S,K,I definining the simplest of automation steps. Initially QofA was my way to understand why P.Maritz's work with S-Algol + 8086 board hit the road rather than the work of G.Steele's LISP machine (aka Scheme) in early 80s. I had worked with the latter and expected it to flourish. When PC/DOS made the scene everywhere its success raised an issue for me. (Also for many Computer Scientists that did not pay attention to the micro wave of technology - please mind the blank character). Now we know it is the combination of Moore (Intel hardware) and Gates (MS strategy) that answers the problem. The appropriate QofA goes forward first. Note, also that the inappropriate one did hit the road eventually as Java VM (recarnating Landin's definitional interpreters) and Steele became the first editor of the manual by SUN. So it's a small world definately. So, it is a bit messy how I came to think about QofA as the general pattern of Net advances.

Computing-as-interaction was Licklider's symbiosis, Engelbart's augmentation in mid 60s. My own first exposure to it, was by Turchin's meta-mechanical process (REFAL machine + Users). When I communicated to Turner around '96 about internet and functional programming he made reference to Milner's work (93 Turing award) I think since he said that parallelism needs to be a 1st-class citizen at programming language level not just an implementation technique. Interesting that Milner insists on Elements of interection in 2005.

All the above look very similar (*) to Internet Systematics, as a pattern of concepts to approach the Net. This gives me the idea to review the so called "layered schemes" like OSI, Bakens, End2End and finally analyse my own "Layers of evolution scheme" as a model of events and developments taking place not just over the web, as Milner suggests but on a pre-web as well as a post-web scale.

So, I am very happy to describe internet systematics as a foundational theory about the evolution of Elements of interaction. Of course I am not in the same business as Milner, I am not equipped for such a mathematical task.

The folowing slide show some diagrams that exhibit the thinking pattern associated with internet systematics

(#) combinators is a concept equivalent to Lambda Calculus, a strong point of influence upon R.Milner's Pi Calculus.

(+) ASN.1 abstract syntac notation, a universal language to express all data structures used by communication protocol technology. Turchin's REFAL, had a similar universal role in expressing all kinds processes. This was a signal for me, a match maker to entagle Turchin's ontology for describing Net events, a kind of Net Science .

(*) ok, similary means some common things such as the influence of Lambda Calculus, the goal of locating basic concepts to model to model upon Net events and developments.

History of concepts 2002 until 2006

2008-03-07T05:09:00.000-08:00

A plain draft follows:

Trying to locate the next step came to the idea that it concerns "knowledge". For example the time that the set of tools named BEEP by Marshall Rose came out. On reading their vision it seemed that Net wants to build its own "education system". By encoding know-how in technologies for example about the *TP layer, no need to re-invest transports for asynchronous communication.

Then, I came across the work of Merteens about the importance of Truncated and Embedded Knowledge in products and services (his Phd supervised by Turchin's collaborator. I was concerned about "learning" and came across the work of Wiley, in particular his concept of OSSOS (Online Self-sustaining Open Systems).

In 2002, I entered the area of "security" under the vision of "Internet Knowledge systematics". The idea was to experiment with knowledge communication in this area. A great help came from an open source project named "honeynet research alliance". A two year collaboration produced useful results like knowledge bootstrap process identification, international visibility, innovation attainment. Also, the concept of reflected learning path came out from this experiment, an application of peer production logic to education, confirming in practise Benkler's theoretical result. Scaling the experiment to attain self-sustainance remains as a challenge.

(tbc) ....

History of concepts 1986 - 2001

2008-01-30T10:18:00.000-08:00

1985 : While researching the idea of paradigm shifting the Von Neumann Programming Model came across the programming language REFAL which gives a new dimension to Functional (Applicative, Equational) Programming.

1986 : Entered the field of Networking through the idea of building an NRN with OSI technology. Involved with RARE and COSINE. Build the Greek part of the IXI network and link an SM90 unix machine to it.

1987 : Communicated with Valentin Turchin about his concept of "stairway effect" in software systems. VFT suggests his book "The phenomenon of Science",Columbia University Press Bookstore finally delivers book to Greece (by sea transport to save costs),

1988 : Getting familiar with UNIX, UUCP, X.25, MODEMS, LEASED ANALOG LINES - large scale real network. TELMAT SM90, Bull SPS7, MINITEL are the computers that provide the platform to practice networking.

1989 : Started building an X.400/X.25 international node "ISOSUN" on SUN 430. Got first glimse of Internet technology at ULCC, demo and help by Tony Bates.

1990 : Arrange to put Greece (AS2546) on NSFNET via ULCC's fat pipe 512Kbps to Goddard Flight Center. GATEWAY for ARIADNE-T (143.233.0.0) ISOSUN (143.233.1.1).

1991 : Influenced by RARE WG3 got involved with networked information resources. Participated in the group that reviewed the original proposal of Tim-Berners-Lee at CERN. What is "networked information" what kind of system is going to emerge to extend the anon-ftp-sphere ?

1992 : Discovered the power of MIME as a transformation step introducing the multimedia Net. Participated in Book Internet: Getting started

1993 : Assimilate Turchin works (MST Theory, Metacomputing, ) as a reference model to understand Net evolution as a method to understand Net fundamentals. It takes time to encode net-happenings into such a language.

1994 : Started associating Internet developments across the OSI layers and Social layers (e.g RIPE, EBONE or IX ) and interpreting them as patterns of Metasystem transitions.

1995 : Obtain experience on the propagation of Internet computing to the business field and commerse, link CIDR with the MST model, locate JAVA as MST also, write to Paul M. about it.

1996 : Re-join Research Center Demokritos, first HTML pages about Network Theory, coined the label Net8, research the issue "network" and relate it to Saunders McLain, S.Papert, Toffler,

1997 : Harvest some 8,000 web pages, create 3000 tags to categorise them, at the same time follow systematically Net-happeings as a source of information about events and developments related to Internet innovations.

1998 : coin the term Internet Systematics to mean a kind of network theory

1999 : discover Virtual Von Neumann Machine, report to 1st Hellenic Conference on Operational Research & Applications , establish the idea that Net advances are equivalent to the introduction of Digital automation steps.

2000 : associate the terms MST, UMST with Network advances, discover the concept of Automation Quantum, map the stages of the evolutin path

2001 : relate Metacomputing, a field of Functional Programming to the Internet Paradigm.

my learning path leads to a theory scheme

2007-12-07T07:35:00.000-08:00

My learning path coincided with major Networking advances like the formation of RIPE and the EBONE and the withering of the ISO protocols like X.25 and X.400.
Also, the transition to Autonomous routing and later to CIDR, the rising of Multimedia, the creation of the World Wide Web just after the Archie and Gopher network services initiated the Networked Informational Resources track.

As my path started from the rather general consideration "what is the Net ?" like the guys at SUN Microsystems started at "the Net is the computer" it unavoidedly set going a radar on net innovation. This is why it bleeped on notable signals that I was lucky to receive from developments like RIPE, EBONE, CIDR, MIME, ARCHIE, WWW. In fact, some time later O'Reilly media also thought alike.

For example to OSI or not to OSI was a major Net issue in early 80s where I got heavily involved. How heavy ? well in the order of turning a National Research Network to adopt the Internet tools and methods (aka TCPIP, and IETF, RFC) rather than those of COSINE (aka X.25, X.400, FTAM and ISO). COSINE was the name of a EU project to advance networking. The name stands for "co-operation for open systems in europe", a grouping of experts (like IETF perhaps). The project was based on the idea of creating local organizations, the so called NRNs (national research networks) which would meet in a federated union like RARE (like NANOG perhaps).

Another example is my path hit was the problem 'what is networked information' as I was a member of the working group that pondered the issue. I guess it is no coincidene that XML FAQ maintainance is done by a colleague in the group Peter, peer from in Ireland as National Reseach Network developer.

This kind of investigation about the big picture prompted the radar to detect the previous stages, to seek a Darwinean like logic of developments. How come ?

Now, this was not just a random thread, strung by the famous resident myth of Ariadne (the project I was leading techinically in greece) but driven by the background framework of a general evolution theory called Metasystem Transition Theory by V. Turchin. A physisist that turned to “meta-computing”, his customised term for Functional Programming, a field of Computing associated with paradigm shifting the so called Von Neumann/Turing model in early 80s.

A relevant event is also my involvement in this line of work with David Turner, who fixed at the time the so problem of software crisis as the ultimate motivation for functional programming.

Symbol system evolution was critical for Turchin aiming to form a possible picture that models the emergence of Science, the most advanced point in his evolutionary scheme. Turchin creted the term “meta-science” to mark the next major advance to follow Science. In this course, Turchin assigns software a major role and
arrived at the idea to emulate Nature’s progress that evolved constructs such as Life, Brain, Language, Symbol systems, Society and Science.

Emulation technically means for him implementing in software the fundamental mechanism of MST (see earlier posts). He has obtained and published quite a few results (the supercompiler, A proof of ZF axioms completeness in constructive mathematics).

He is a great believer in the importance of the programming language REFAL (belongs to functional programming category) and he published its possible use as an alternative to XML the much awaited development on the WEB which does induce a further level of automation into processing networked resources.

I shifted the locus of attention and said "what if I think metasystem transitions in Networking" . The result was to extract from observation a fundamental concept modeling network advances. I was lucky to be involved with some of the occuring changes and the practise of the learn-by-doing was feasible. I generalized the innovation path that I followed on the radar or traced in retrospect as "a thread of network automation steps" accumulated by the global Network entity

The thread started with the Strowger switch, automating the manually operated switchboard connecting people in La Port-Indiana, the first network automation quantum gradually propagating everywhere until caught by the next Tofflerian wave of the digital switch giving rise to the global telekom network. And then ARPANET was overlaid, the mother of all computer networks inducing a new kind of automation by the NCP nodes.

If I am to be strict, the really first automation quantum on the Net must be that associated with the system of fryctories in ancient Greece. It is said that it was used to transfer at almost the speed of light (it did use light from fires) the news to Mycenae that the Trojan horse had succeeded in Troia.

Internet Systematics key points

2007-11-02T10:21:00.000-07:00

One Net approach like EFF announced some time ago for the purpose of protecting its free and open character. The campaign of EFF underlined the need to raise awareness about the value of the Net as a public resource.

The evolutionary aspect coupled with the aim to identify the evolution layers that keep developing, extending or modifying previous constructs.

Macroscopic view of the Net (like the style of R.Khare in Seventh Heaven, like the Pseudo-area idea of F.Baker from IAB/IETF in order to monitor layer-2 developments from IETF (organized into Areas) but not getting into the actual domain of work since other organizations like the IEEE are directly concerned). French Scientist Joel De Rosnay has a whole book devoted to this approach for complex systems. In chapter 4 of his book he considers information and interaction.

Central issue is the stages of development (like L.Robert's timeline but for a shorter period) this is the zoom level we work at. He starts from Gutemberg's press and closes with ARPANET. He identifies as intermediate stages the following advances: Photography, Radio transmission, the Telephone network, Televison and the Computer.

Key concept the Quantum of Automation that is embodied onto the Net (like Baran's idea to automate his command-and-control scheme with US radio stations) with each advance taking place. The first quantum that I located was that of DNS. Marshall Rose once said "in the time honoured tradition of the hosts.txt ...." validating my discovery. Prior to DNS, the Net operated under manual naming procedures, later I discovered L.Roberts refering to the automation of the telekom network.

Examine the whole of technical advances and see the outcome, was a legitimate proposition put forward by J.Postel according to R.Khare. Eric Levenez created a picture concerning UNIX, connecting all versions and associated advances over the years. This is very close to the aim of Internet Systematics.

Since there is no overall plan about the Net, Internet Systematics offers an holistic interpretation conditioned by the actual advances emerging. This is the main idea, to extract a "model" from the sequence of advances, C.Papadimitriou from Stanford chose Game Theory to model aspects of the Net stating that the Net offers a paradigm beyond Von Neumann, validating somehow my initial problem statement, namely " to see what the Net looks like", in the early 80s.

The concepts of "metacomputing" and "metasystem transition" of Valentin Turchin provided the guiding principles applied to the distributed computing arena and community rather than the field of Software construction. Here is the source of the idea to combine machinery and users as one entity also. Turchin calls it a "meta-mechanical" process so the blog has the name "meta-artificial" implying a next stage from that of artificial intelligence the era where computing emerged) . A RAND study is also using the term "noosphere in relation to WWW and evolution so it comes close to Turchin also.

in simple terms, the global Net and its binding Community is a phenomenon unfolding a novel entity that Internet Systematics seeks to provide semantics for.

Web Science

2007-02-22T10:05:00.000-08:00

T.B.Lee et all have published a paper in www.sciencemag.org with the title "Creating a Science of the Web" where they call for a new interdisciplinary field in order to model the web, to understand the architectural principles. In the paper, the authors position Physical - natural Sciences in relation to Computer Science, they say knowledge bases became "Webized" (*), they held a workshop in September 2005 (see posting about elements of interaction), they talk about symbolic systems, the role of artificial intelligence, they mention "macroscopic web phenomena". All these approaches together with some other, referred to as "we are the web", "we are the media" seem to have a lot in common with the approach I name "Internet Systematics".

(*) this is exactly the term I used for the FAQ of the lab naned internet systematics lab using the features of the CMS Postnuke to encode our working algoritm in the lab in order to record people's digital trail left on the lab. A systematic way of communicationg knowledge and dexterites. The spirit of GNU project was made as the modality and absolute working rule for the lab. The outcome is called Reflected Learning paths followed by students under mentorship for lab's instructors. I consider such a development to be a kind of application resulting from the approach that internet systematics induces.

Another one wants to create a "whole" picture

2007-01-19T04:08:00.000-08:00

"Running Money" by Andy Kessler is a recently published book by a Hedge Fund manager that scored high in the just pre dotcom disaster. P.Delaportas prompted me to read it as it gave an excellent description of technological advances while trying to locate the killer stocks from the hi-tech segment.

He brings in interesting data about Doug Engelbart (Mr. personal computer aka PC) and his Augmentation Vision
He mentions ARPANET and things I like ....
He finds out who sent the first Packet (Kleinrock) and reminds by first similar act.
He analyzes the BROWSER revolution and points to some bad moves that have severe consequences
He establishes the concept of SCALE, a "systemic" feature of Internet (links to my Iinternet Systematics) as the key characteristic that labels success
He presents us techies with the money dimension that drives the market (I centaily had no clue before reading it)

In general, I categorize him as a good source that helps the picture I am pushing under the name Internet Systematics, so I will go on about the book ...

The Functional Programming paradigm influence

2006-07-06T10:42:00.000-07:00

The idea to work on the problem of trying to understand 'deep' the Net seems quite illogical for a person that is just joining the Networking community. The excuse I find for myself to doing such a thing comes from my previous research experience in Functional Programming. It was about a novel computing paradigm that its advance would be driven by cheap computing power implying distributed architectures and novel software paradigms. Imperative (classic) software was inadequate to program a massively parallel system and software costs were rising, hence programs should be constructed differently, they would be accompanied with their proofs appended to their manuals. This was the background framework that conditioned by meeting with the Net. Work duties demanded my deeper understanding. It was not just to configure some system or be a power user of email for example. I had to get under the hood and make things move.

Now I look at it, reality moved differently: the free software phenomenon (started by Stallman, strongly coupled with the phenomenon of internet) accumulated enough eyeballs to drop software costs and program the massively parallel beast that took various names like "arpanet", "internet" and "web". The cheap computing power meant for the Functional Programming supposed to drive novel architectures like thous of cpus arranged in cubical networks came about in the form of cheap supercomputers (aka linux clusters).

Of course, the in-secure programming methods, at present, does bring back the issue of costs due to software so the story of secure (quality) programming is not over yet. Turchin stated alound recently that REFAL is better than XML and tools such as XSLT seem to bear the influence from Functional Programming. Dave Farber also thought of Fuctional Programming for the Net by the name "active networks" in mid 90s. A lot of Functional Programming went to JAVA (certainly a Net programming language) like the concept of garbage collection. Guy Steele was the JAVA spec editor for example and this cannot be just a coincidence.

All and all I am saying is that Internet Systematics was not just a crazy idea but the direct influence of Functional Programming. The different levels (layers) of automation.

A picture about the evolution of the Net

2006-07-06T10:05:00.000-07:00

Once the course was set to understand the Net, I made the working hypothesis that this is going to come about through examing the advances that have taken place and constructing their interpretation. At some point I came upon a broschure by Larry Roberts the Arpanet director. He had a timeline of advances starting from Guterburg's press, the photography, the radio and the TV and finally marking the computer and the computer network. From there my idea of "evolution" as reference model got a firm base.

Researching the topic of the Domain Name System, trying to understand what kind of computer artifact it is because first of all it was definately a point of major innovation of the Net. Marshal T. Rose made a reference to the "time honoured tradition of the host.txt file" thus registering it as a notable change.

So I raised the question "what is the DNS step ?" at the time where the so called DNS wars were on full swing and the name of Jon Postel, as the initial point of control of Internet names. Before I present this sub-system, I will remain for a while on some points of generality concerning the issue of forming a Net picture.

My investigation brought me to Postel's proposal to R.Khare to collect all technical data concerning the construction of Internet and see what it comes out of it. So the idea to form a picture of the Net is a legitimate one. So I moved ahead.

Next thing that I considered as a major problem was my position on this research course. Places such as the IETF and the WGs (later other means such W3C followed) are places where the resources of information are created. How was I to do something useful while not participating inside them ? The answer came from an email by F.Baker on the issue of "pseudo-area".

Research agenda

2006-06-29T01:54:00.000-07:00

My Phd research (1983) was about the effects of a distributed computing architecture on functional programming, a simulation study using the SASL (1979 D.Turner) interpreter that I parallelized. and application programs expressed as SASL scripts.

Next phase concerned a deeper investigation about the nature of this novel programming paradigm (as John .Backus proclaimed in his ACM's Turing Award lecture in 1978). Seeking answers to why such a 'nice' tool did not become the killer-trend in IT while the infamous PC (personal computer) did. I re-examined a related philosophy and general outlook of functional programming given by V.Turchin (1988). There I satisfied my problematics by accepting his thesis that it is the evolutionary (a long-term trend) character of computing that matters not the one-hop destructive replacement (a short-term trend) that happens in IT up to now. We have to learn to construct systems that have an evolution capability embedded in them. This is his 'metacomputing' paradigm (1996). Turchin has implemented the concept by a tool that is called 'supercompiler' (from supervise and compile a program in order to optimise it).

My theoretical work with the Net is offering an evolutionary interpretation of the process that builds the Net adding new components to it (sub-systems) and although it replaces some old ones none the less it accumulates into an ever evolving conplex architecture. So we have a chained construction continuously advancing into something that I seek to comprehend. I applied somehow the idea of 'metacomputing' to the evolution of Internet as a method to solve the issue I raised.

My Research job in Networking in late 80s quickly brought me to the issue of developing a model of the Net within the general framework that a novel computing paradigm is emerging. From there I tried to identify its basic principles much the same way things are done in mainstream computer science. At some point in time I found 'similar' quests and got encouragement. Rohit Khare's articles is an example. Gradually the early model mentioned above aquirred a bigger set of characteristics which gave me a sense of forecasting Net events and developments. For example the selection of the WWW line rather than the initial GOPHER line in the beginning of 1990 as the prevailing trend. This was due to the fact that WWW had greater scaling capability based on automation mechanism (using DNS, introducing URL and HTML) against the manually operated mechanism of GOPHER and its tables. I was lucky to be a member of a Working Group at the time that was concerned with Networked Information Resources, there I was exposed to the thinking that led to the Web. This led me later to the awareness, as a corollary, that I had created an innovation radar since I had similar successes in forecasting Net advances. This was my way of 'proving' the correctness of the model.
The present phase of my research is concerned with wrapping up and presenting the model - a convergence of computing and communication developments of the past till the present.

Basic questions I have been dealing with:

what is this entity that is emerging
what are its origins and
what are its distinguished points of development.

No doubt meeting the slogan 'the Net is the computer' gives me a great sense of confidence in my research. What kind of computer is it ?

Another angle of my work is that I got involved with Net developments such as the introduction of multimedia into the Net by the MIME technology (1991 N.Borestein) a fact that led me to his associated works like Computational Email that matched my novel machine philosophy.
Another example is the introduction of CIDR into the Net taking place as a on-flight machine change (1995). The collection of facts like these are going to be integrated into my model, an unfolfing chain of steps, each adding a Net's component. What does this chain look like is my next challenge.
About 1999 I constructed a definite Net picture, a global computing (distributed) machine in fact but it is not the autonomous device of Turing but the joint man-machine enterprise that Turchin (1996) calls meta-machanical machine. The user of the machine is an organic part of it. Turchin's goal is constructive Mathematics so I could say perhaps I am on a right path since meta-mathematics (1930 Hilbert) established computing. My model of distributed computing and communication is using concepts from the same background field and this fact perhaps supports my approach. What I am saying (taking the risk) is that since the origin of computing certainly lies in the "meta" aspects of mathematics then my fiddling with the "meta" of computing (modulated as distributed computing, ie an evolution step) is promising. This is the idea of naming this blog "meta-artificial", the next to AI phase. Do not get me wrong, seeking a new computing paradigm has led me into this !.

In addition, I hope the presentation of this work will assist the global debate about the Semantic Web, the next step that is being constructed now. I will interpret this step as a new Meta-mechanical Automation Quantum that extends the global Virtual Von Neumann machine. A recent interview (2006 T.Berners-Lee) about the nature of Semantic Web fits well as the next frame of the picture I have created about the evolving Net.

These two concepts "Meta-mechanical Automation Quantum" and "global Virtual Von Neumann machine" are the pillars of my model of the Net.

Internet Systematics a foundational study about Networking

2006-04-13T06:30:00.000-07:00

Packet Switching, Layering Protocols, Client-Server Applications, Network Programming

are more or less the classifal foundational concepts upon which an understanding of Networking commenses.

Digital Electronics, Computer Architecture, Programming Language, Operating Systems,
Data Bases, Graphics etc are the corresponding concepts in stand alone Computing.

In 80s, Computing Paradigms (software) such as Functional, Logic, Object are concepts which extended the framework of classic Computing and opened the road for new constructions. One such paradigm is the so called Metacomputing, a fundamental concept (research) that posses the idea of computing system evolution. Here the concept of Metamechanical process is also very interesting since it refers to a system that it has the machine and its user at the same process level.

Free Software is also a contemporary basic concept that is based on large scale collaboration made possible through the wide availability of Network infrastructure. Here we also have evidence of an on-going evolutionary process creating complex infrastructure.

Internet system evolution offers an investigation trail which aggregates all the steps traced by the on-going construction process that seems promising for deepening our understanding of the Networking field. Such a need is justified since its only 50 years ago that "computer" signaled the human element.

This is the subject of study Internet Systematics (rather than the term System-ics) is focusing. In our view there is no better name describing the task of understanding Networking through its construction steps.

About form appropriate for Internet systematics

2006-02-14T08:38:00.000-08:00

Most of the raw material is in hand scrible. Tried blogging in http://www.blogger.com/home
to create a first deposit of "what is Internet systematics" http://meta-artificial.blogspot.com/
and a similar quite experimental form in net8.jotspot.com.
Blogging is webalization of a person's communication indexed by Date. Here the index could
be the phases tht the global infrastructure traces in time where each phase corresonds to an
emergent component e.g. the DNS mechanism.

Another form is to make Internet systematics a kind of portal like http://www.securityFocus.com
which brings together various aspects of Internet like the "IETF areas" or "W3C domains/tracks".

Certainly the form of book has also registered as an option.

NOTE: As Internet Systematics Network Theory is an unfinished entity or even if it stabilizes to
something it is likely to evolve since it observes emerging technologies it makes necessary
to find a recording medium. Initially I thought the form of a "paper" would suffice but
as the referenced material needed a certain wrapper and some other difficulties made
the serialized text impossible. In fact only useful for an overview or an outlook.

Re-discovering the MSTT basic concepts

2006-01-31T05:54:00.000-08:00

All previous posts have been about describing what
is Internet Systematics. In other similar off-blog attempts a similar goal has been pursued namely to present the activity I have been systematically carrying on related to observing, participating and kind of theorizing about the Net. I have encountered certain difficulties such as the difficulty to communicate the subject matter because it originates from various domains of Knowledge. Another difficulty is the evolving nature of every factor involved in this process, like moving sand.

One useful approach, in order to deal with the communcation problem, is to focus on why the MSTT vehicle is useful beyond Turchin's field of application. So my 'automation quantum' becames another name for 'metasystem transition' no need to establish it as a separate concept. So IS = MSTT applied to ICT evolution. I need to elaborate why concepts such as "system", "metasystem" and "ultra-meta-system" are useful from the point of view how I discovered them in my pursue to understand the unfolding of the Internet phenomenon. Of course, I may then refer to the metacomputing approach to software construction and other concepts of Turchin-works which help me explain the origins of my thinking. So I avoid the task of casting everyting from first principles.

Internet Systematics appreciation examples

2005-08-22T12:52:00.000-07:00

The usefulness of a model lies in its capability to forecast certain future events related to the entity that it tries to represent faithfully.

Internet Systematics first succesful forecast was the appreciation of the Internet/IETF dynamics against the ISO/COSINE counterpart.

An Early appreciation of the NIR drive inside the joint RARE-IETF wg focusing on Science Communication needs and locating resources and sharing them. Initiated the info-hunt programme similar to NSF's

Internet Systematics succesful forecast of the dynamics of WWW drive against Gopher

The succesful appreciation of the JAVA dynamics (see private communication)

Early appreciation of the power of the MIME transformation

Early appreciation of the political entaglement of the IANA/DNS registration

Early appreciation of the ARCHIE 'web service' paradigm

An Early appreciation of the E-commerse paradigm while involved with UNICORN technology

An Early appreciation of big-internet changes like IPv6 and CIDR

Developed a feel for research topics like Active Networking and issues such as the Rise of the Stupid network and the importance of the End-to-End design

An Early appreciation of the issue of security as an emerging issue for Internet and the importance of the 'open source' logic.

Developed a thorough understanding of the structural components driving Internet development and tried to effectivily apply it in the case of NRN and Public ISP.

An Early appreciation of trends like Free Software and initiated local support at the same time devising a 'similar' knowledge sharing project in the field of Security. Devised the concept of reflected learning and created related intranet

A prodigy vision to associate Metasystem Transition Theory and Internet/WWW

The usefulness of the idea of 'pseudo-area' knowledge trucking method

An Early appreciation of the pros/cons of ATM

An Early appreciation of the QoS - new flow router technology by Caspian

CONCLUSION: seeking the innovation aspects, knowledge communication medium, large scale aspects, inter-scientific issues, computational paradigm, enabling transformation

are features of Internet that IS helped me identify.

The Virtual Von Neumann Architecture

2005-07-20T09:13:00.000-07:00

The chain of Automation Quanta (AQ) generated by Internet Systematics is interpreted as the virtual Von Neumann architecture (VVNA) and thus we have an Internet Model.

What is AQ1, AQ2, AQ3,.......

Each AQi represents the mechanization of a previously mannualy executed distributed process by the user agents of the Net which transends its developent stages as

VVNA1, VVNA2, VVNA3,......

Initially IS identified Net's Naming process concerned with the manual maintainance and distribution of the file Hosts.txt [RK] as the first Automation Quantum embedded gradually to the global infrastructure as dictated by RFCxxx - The Domain Name System. Later this was identified as AQ3 (see blog:List of frames generated by IS). The pattern of AQs is repeated with all major advances in the Routing, Addressing, NIR-ing, etc
sub-system components of the Internet System (Internet, ARPANET, WWW are the transitional names the evolving Net)

Let's see how the interpretation works.

VVNA1 is ARPANET

Initial development took place as the deployment of the STROWGER SWITCH replacing the manual operators of the telephone system. This form of automation, induced by the STROWGER SWITCH, implemented by elementary devices which influenced the construction of the Von Neumann Architecture. Gradually we arrived at the DIGITAL SWITCH the most basic component of the global Telecom network (PSTN). So we can bind all the activities which lead to the construction of ARPANET under the label Automation Quantum One (AQ1) This creates the infrastructure upon which to overlay ARPANET the first global computer network. All ARPANET computers execute the NCP suite of programs constituting the virtual CPU of the global machine, their filesystems is the virtual Memory and the Telecom lines constitute the virtual BUS. So we can bind all the activities which lead to the construction of ARPANET under the label Automation Quantum One (AQ1).

VVNA1 is made of the folowing components:

the virtual CPU
the virtual MEMORY
the virtual BUS

The nature of AQ2 concerns the automation offered to the users by the application suite of ARPANET - Telnet/FTP/Mail. Can this component be interpeted as

AQ1: manual operator -> strowger switch, digital switch, ncp arpanet node

AQ2: manual telecom communication (voice, text) -> Email, FTP, TELNET, TCP/IP

AQ3: manual Naming -> DNS

AQ4: manual IP routing -> core routing, Backbone, external routing (EGP,RIP,OSPF,BGP, CIDR)

NOTE ---- AQ1.1: manual Telecom -> MPLS/FiberOptic automation

VVNA1: Arpanet
VVNA2: Internet (TCP/IP) - bus=digital telecom
VVNA3: Internet (DNS) - bus= Net w/o automatic naming
VVNA4: Internet (EGP-....-CIDR) - bus= Net w/o automatic routing-manual
VVNA5: Internet (MIME) - bus= Net w/ manual multimedia messaging
VVNA6: Internet (NIR) - bus= Net w/o archie, gopher, www - network services
VVNA7: Internet (QoS) - bus=Net w/ best effort transport

VVNAi+1 =is AQi applied to VVNAi where VVNA1 = ARPANET and AQ1=SS

CONCLUSION: All network advances the last 50 years are modelled by the folowing concepts

(a) the Automation Quantum (AQ)
(b) the virtual von Neumann Architecture (VVNA)
(c) a sequence of AQ(j)
(d) the chain VVNA(i)

The Automation Quantum

2005-07-20T09:12:00.000-07:00

Internet Systematics basic result, after observing and experiencing network technology advances as presented by the previous blog: List of Frames generated by IS a common pattern is identified. All advances concern the introduction of a certain level of automation over previously executed processes manually within the net. So unlike artificial intelligence whose advances concern game playing here we have a joint venture of man and computer embarking on a series of advances that we choose to interpret as one enterprise. Advances that initiate with the simplest of communication tasks (operator switching) and reaching the recent innovative activity of the W3C (the tech. body that drives the web) to build the Semantic Web.

Thinking a little deeper we link this concept (The Automation Quantum) with the concept of Metasystem Transition from Cybernetics. It was great surprise that while trying to understand Metasystem Transitions in the computer I discovered a similar concept, that of the Automation Quantum inside the novel entity, we call the Net, computer-like as the phrase 'the net is the computer' indicate.

The concept of Automation Quantum presents a unified interpretation of Net advances that helps our understanding of this evolving complex architecture (a 2nd generation of computerization) in particular as it is undergoing changes continuously. Changes of quantitative nature (e.g Home networking) as well as qualitative advances (e.g video streaming, voice-over-Internet).

List of frames generated by Internet Systematics

2005-07-20T08:58:00.000-07:00

Expecting to get a picture of Net evolution from Internet Systematics, I jump right away to the happy-end and present the list of frames that constitute the picture. For each one of the frames I will post an essay, later on, explaining its importance in my analysis. The sequence of frames explains technological evolution at macro scale. One of my initial presentation in 1999 was titled 'Internet under the macroscope', it is in Greek text at the moment but the included diagrams show the main features of Internet Systematics.

There is also intra-frame evolution as in the case of the global telecom network with major changes appearing between decades. Strowger Switch (1950s), MPLS/Fiber Optics (2000) both these major advances concern the automation of the telecom network by replacing the corresponding manual procedures associated with operation and maintainance.

The Strowger Switch
a more humble task compared to the Coloseus of Bletchley Park but both were driven by the same logic, to automate a manual procedure which triggered tremendous innovation forces

Arpanet Packet Switching
Packet switching is the single technological development which accounts

Flag Day 1-1-1983: First and Last manual step (NCP to TCP transition)
Discovering the statement by John Postel as this being the first and last manual act hunted my imagination about his sense of the way Internet was heading to. There the meaning of the phrase 'internet scale' broke clear for me for the first time.

DNS: the automation of the naming process = manual distribution and update of the HOSTS.TXT file
Question : What is the Domain Name System ?
Answer: Automation of a manul (distributed) procedure

Question : What is Automation ?
Answer: The Turing Machine

Question : Can I map onto this concept some aspect of the Computer Network ?
Answer: Difficult ....

Question : To what did The Turing Machine evolve to ?
Answer: The Von Newman architecture (machine)

Question : Can I map onto this concept some aspect of the Computer Network ?
Answer: The total collection of the BIND processors is the virtual CPU. The Zone files is the virtual MEMORY. The virtual BUS is the Net without automatic naming. The I/O to this virtual computer is the RESOLVE DNS client programs.

Autonomous System routing (a series of advances from manual routing )
I read "There is manual routing table maintainance", somewhere (COMER ?) trying to learn how Internet works. Note that at the time did not have the expererience of EBONE and RIPE where I learned about the need to advance the routing technology to care for treating the EBONE core nodes as being on the same LAN.

The MIME multimedia transformation of the Messaging component
MIME is so important that the same mechanism was incorporated by WWW technology.
Its innovator N.S. Borenstein had a bunch of great ideas like 'computational email' which influence my thinking set off by the trade mark 'the Net is the computer'.

The Archie system, the first search engine
while running two student projects titled 'info-hunt' and 'pythia' respectively
to locate, collect and then publish thematic resources on the Internet in 1990 we were overtaken by the Archie system which indexed anonymous ftp sites. It did automatically what we were doing manually and our on-line service 'pythia' never reached the size of Arc hie's indices. But none the less here lies our eureka moments where understanding of net-automation was established.

The WWW series of advances leading to the Semantic Web
It was 1989 that as a member of the WG I was exposed to T.B.Lee's web vision
after some time and whike NSFNET stats were pointing at Gopher traffic with exponential growth I risked my first prediction ' WWW is more scalable system because it has the URL automation (HTML) which is based on DNS automation, hence an overall more powerful system than the manually operated Gopher-root server in Sweden'.

The CIDR change routing engine on flight
Following IETF's discussions on the big-internet List got familiar with the issues such as scaling facing the Net at the time. There I learned about a plan which incorporated the greatest transitional power.

The Automation of the telecom network
Larry Roberts' writings and ideas about the Timeline of Innovations:

Gutenburg's Press > Photography > Radio > TV > Computer > ARPANET

helped my confidence that 'evolution' is a major issue on the road to understanding Internet, I just had to 'decode'its mechanism.

In a white paper about the status of Internet routing technology he refers to 'automating the telecom network' as being the current issue.

The rise of the WITI problem

2005-07-20T05:25:00.000-07:00

Looking at Internet History accounts from key people , also at various books about the Internet and its origins, at various articles in eZines and finally at the wikipedia entry about the Internet, surely one gets a good picture about it. For example what Internet is not.

In addition, by participating in a number of projects or activities relating to the growth, usage or development of the Net one gets an experience of the WITI - What Is The Internet - problem. We carried out such activiies in early 90s ( greek text at the moment). Just to give a quick account, it was really interesting times where important components or sub-systems of the Net were emerging such as:

Internet in Greece
The MIME multimedia Net transformation (got Borenstein's draft from Maria Demou at CERN and built an email system (greek text) with elm and metamail), then found the idea of Computational Email by NSB, a MIME based innovation (early "web computing" idea)
The Archie indexing of the FTP-sphere (we were doing it manually as a student project)
RIPE control point for the Net (as national representative)
BGP II to VI routing transformation (got the experience through EBONE consortium membership)
Networked Information component (member of the working group)

The above observations were giving substance to the WITI problem and were shaping the logic of the list of answers to expect.

Is there something else to shed light on the issue ?, a method to construct a picture of the Net ?

I believe that there is and it is Internet Systematics that takes a good shot at the job of constructing this picture.

The meaning of the term "systematics" as in "system" is thus revealed here. Our working hypothesis is that a global computer like system is being advanced continuously (already said by the infamous trademark of Sun Microsystems, of course).

By deploying a method, similar to the idea of F.Baker (ex IETF chair) called "pseudo-area" we observe (in some cases we participate directly) the evolution of Net's components. This allows us a kind of abstraction from the vast amount of information that exists inside the IETF's areas. Of course staying at this informational distance we loose facts and data but hopefully we do not loose the whole picture.

I think, Internet Systematics does something similar to what J.Postel had in mind when he proposed to Rohit Khare to work on the collected technical data about Internet protocols at ISI.EDU (drafts, rfcs, documents) in order to "see" what picture comes out of it. This did not take place according to the latter's statement on the occasion of Postel's orbituary.
I found in Rohit Khare's analysis of Internet problems a similar modality to Internet systematics.

The motivation for setting ourselves such a problem (the WITI problem) was perhaps accidental. On the one hand was the practical aspect of the task what kind of Net to build and the other was the influnce of previous research related to looking for a new computing paradigm (the so-called functional programming paradigm).

Internet Systematics is a language inside which we want to reflect and analyse the properties of the basic elements of the Internet phenomenon. You may also think of it as a kind of theory much like the historical perspectives above but aiming to codify, to create terms and concepts much like a formalism does.

In short, Internet Systematics will generate an evolutionary picture of the Net.

Terminology A-Z of Internet Systematics

2005-05-23T05:04:00.000-07:00

Previous posting 13/5/2005 introduced a long list of terms, that need some
definition. This is the goal of the present posting: Internet Computing Paradigm, Von Neumann computing/programming paradigm, Software Crisis, Proof Data, Meta-computing, Meta-mechanical process, Metasystem Transitions in the computer

We start with those, as they appear on the defining text about Internet Systematics.

Internet Computing Paradigm
The term should also include Communications. The global Internet, viewed as one entity, is made out of computers, communication lines
and software so it admits a kind of picture, our main concern here, a moving picture in fact where in every frame some new component emerges. One way to understand the picture is to interpret it with established concepts. Those that one is familiar with from the field of Computer Science. Whether such a picture is valid or not, it will take quite some blogging to show, so please be patient read on and comment, hopefully you will be rewarded. It is a moving picture, since the Net is evolving from the days of APRANET, to the CATENET and the days of INTERNETWORK to the WWW (Internet II for some) and perhaps to the presently awaited SEMANTIC WEB.

Von Neumann computing/programming paradigm
John Backus in his 1977 Turing Awards lecture coined the term "liberation from the von Neumann style ?",
a proposal for an alternative software construction technology. It was a paradigm shift over the
so called Von Neumann computer/programming architecture and corresponding programming languages. There two characteristic features:

Architecture: CPU,BUS,MEMORY (structural description)
Operation: FETCH, EXECUTE, REPEAT (functional description)

Innovative in the 50s, but a kind of a "bottleneck" for scaling in 80s, hence the need to move on with new concepts, and throw away the established "Imperative" programming style. Technology such as Structured Programming was considered as not innovative enough. New characteristics ?

Architecture: control of massive parallelism by static programming concepts
Operation: reliable software incorporating mathematical proof technology

Software Crisis
David Turner referred to the problem of software crisis in late 70s. By this term he meant that the cost of hardware was dropping sharply against the rising costs of software. This implied inability to exploit cheap computing power (due to Moore's law) to build massively parallel innovative computer architectures. It also implied inability to deploy reliable software where a package would be sold together with its "proof to specs".
Turner also saw that Functional or Applicative Programming may solve the software crisis problem. In fact, this vision still is alive today underthe same banner

Although the field of Functional Programming enriched important developments with its concepts such as virtual machine for software portability, automatic storage management (aka garbage collection) and so on, it has not fullfil its vision. For the time being some other technological
phenomena emerged that gave some different answers.
Free Software provided solutions such as cheap supercomputers with Gnu/Linux clusters to harness massive parallelism and "enough eye balls to make all bugs shallow" and beat software costs.

Proof Data
Surely the subject discussed here is not the easiest to follow, there is a lot of
subjective material. I had this problem the first years the idea of "Internet
Systematics" appeared infront of me. Following "net happenings" by Sackmann whenever I saw something that seemed to fit my picture about the Net or indeed my kind of approach to the problem, I marked it down as a form of evidence to the "theory" I was building.
It was from the field of Theoretical Computer Science
that my idea to associate Internet computing with "paradigm shifting" the von Neumann model got its first "proof", at least as an utterance. There is a definate number of such "proof data" concerning Internet Systematics. As the number grew, it gave the final push to go public.

Meta-computing
This term is a bit overloaded, the grid community for example is using it. Here the term is used as defined by Valentin Turchin, the creator of the Russian LISP, called REFAL
Turchin helped me understand deeper the field of Functional Programming. It gave me
the idea of "evolution" in software. He provided a practical demonstration of such a system.Turchin's concept of Metasystem Transition is central to all of his important works. If a software system includes even one step of self-modification then it exhibits the desirable property of Metasystem transition. It is the long-term goal of programming according to Turchin, to be able to induce the machine to perform a series of such advances rather than a throw-away after one hop improvement. This helped me form a different formulation about Metasystem Transition in order to interpet Net advances (not in the computer as done by Turchin but in the domain of joint efforts by Man-Machine interactions).
I consider Internet Systematics just a copy of the ideas of Turchin and applied to the new phenomenon of the Global Network comprising machines, lines and users.

Meta-mechanical process
This the last term to define in our version 1.0 of A-Z terminology.
Turchin is a strong believer in the constructive approach to Mathematics. He follows Hilbert for mechanizing the Ancient Greek proof, and Godel for showing the limits of it. He extends Turing's idea of mechanising the symbol shifting of the mathematical procedure (called Turing machine or computation) by considering a wider time interval than that the machine is working autonomously. He brings in the user of the mathematical machinery in order to formulate a finitist definition of infinity.The idea here is to reconstruct all foundational ideas in Mathematics by a simple symbol shifting (or bit fliping) mechanism.
He calls such an joint venture a "meta-mechanical process" where a Turing machine initiates and maintains a process while interacting with its human operator.
I borrowed this definition to formulate the idea of "Net evolution" as a particular kind of Metasystem Transitions.

Metasystem Transitions in the computer
Metasystem Transitions in the computer constitutes an approach to Artificial Intelligence according to Turchin. However complex the construction, it is made out of evolvable systems that change through simple symbol shifting. Turchin discovered such an evolution pattern in Nature's construction of Science. Now, the demo of it is in the so called Supercompiler software. There is another source of linking Turchin and the Internet by maintaining his profile on the net.

Meta-artificial intelligence
The term giving the name to the site (meta-artifical.blogspot.com) denotes a new concept in extension to the concept of artificial intelligence. The latter being the slogan under which computing advances took place. Coined by J.MacCarthy in the 60s and having been assigned its meaning described by Alan Turing that computing is a game playing paradigm where the machine executes chess moves. Here, the first statement to shed light about the nature of the novel entity was 'the net is the computer' but we went a little further and interpret Net advances as the replacement of man-machine steps by novel components. In any case, this term 'meta-artificial intelligence' was chosen to indicate that we have a new concept in front of us. Such a claim remains to be established of course.

What is 'Internet Systematics'

2005-05-13T06:46:00.000-07:00

It is an evolving thinking pattern concerning an interpretation of the Internet Computing Paradigm. It is the result of the observation as well as of the participation into the process of building the global Internet over the last 15 years.

The background stage has been that of dis-locating the von-Neumann computing paradigm, a prominent line of thinking in Computer Science in the 80s, in order to solve the software crisis problem.

Starting date may be considered the early 90s where European Research was advancing the idea of the national research network. It was the issue of sorting out between the ISO/OSI model versus the IETF/TCPIP model that fired questions such as 'what is network ?' and 'which is the winner model?'

The above questions fussed with the on-going line of thinking above to give birth to InternetSystematics, a term coined in 1999. The core concept is the type of systems that make the global Internet and how they evolve.

Why talk about it now ?

Because there has been enough proof data collected about it that it will be useful to connect this line of thinking to other important contemporary domains such as that of IRTF's end-2-end group which seeks the successor to the next generation Internet architecture.

So it seems to us that a conceptual picture about the global Internet and its evolution is rather useful in general, so we will proceed with its publication.

Another reason it that it has taken us quite a long time to understand where InternetSystematics leads to. Why is important to talk about it ?. OK, it is a kind of Internet model but what is its use ? Why should one be interested in the concept of Meta-computing created and demonstrated by Valentin Turchin, whose works serve as our reference model.

The answer to the above is that we firmly believe that the world is staging the process of Meta-artificial Intelligence, the successor to Turing's artificial intelligence that was staged at the closed premises of Bletchley Park in the 50s, a term that had enourmous consequences to our life. Perhaps something similar is awaiting this new term.

It is only very recently that we are able to comprehend net-automation advances, our basic theoretical result, as the definition of new kind of process: man-machine intelligence evolution. Here again, Turchin's concept of a meta-mechanical process has been the inspirational force.

Internet Systematics talk is informationally quite complex, it needs an advanced medium to be communicated. The presently used 'interface' will be the front-end of a more sophisticated medium based on wiki technology currently being constructed.

Note: whatever is in bold needs further blogging and referencing, please await further communication on it.