Understanding the Internet

Abstract

The Internet has surpassed the computer as the most complex and intriguing computational artifact of our time, and it is therefore a most natural and worthy subject of study by all fields of Computer Science.There are several ways in which the Internet is novel, indeed unprecedented, and of special interest to the Artificial Intelligence research community: ? It was not deliberately designed in any reasonable sense, and therefore it is the first computational artifact that must be approached as a mysterious phenomenon (or behavior) that we need to understand; this is a little more familiar in Artificial Intelligence than in other fields of Computer Science, because in AI the physiological basis of human intelligence had been of interest for some time. ? The Internet was not designed by a single designer or team for the benefit of a single entity; instead, it is built, operated and used by a dazzling multiplicity of agents, in various and varying degrees of collaboration and competition with each other. As a result, Game Theory and Mathematical Economics are of obvious relevance in this line of research, as is, to a somewhat lesser extent, the Theory of Agents developed by researchers in AI. ? The Internet supports, via the worldwide web but not only, access to information of unprecedented scale, availability, and diversity in content, nature and structure. The problem of accessing all this information, even understanding what is available, especially by vast numbers of inexpert users, promises to affect deeply the research agenda in both Databases and Artificial Intelligence. ? Finally, the Internet is starting to act as Sea for Artificial Intelligence. Here is what I mean: During the Cambrian period a fantastic diversity of aquatic species evolved, competed, and evolved further; most of today's animals can be traced to that explosion. The Internet is a perfect medium for all sorts of computational ideas (AI programs in particular) to live and compete, and to be tried, evaluated, combined and improved.