Terraforming cyberspace

Abstract

Like preterraformed Mars, cyberspace currently offers a lonely, dangerous, and relatively impoverished environment for software agents. Although promoted as collaborative, agents do not easily sustain rich, long-term, peer-to-peer relationships, let alone any semblance of meaningful community involvement. Rather than just building smarter and stronger agents, researchers must transform the wasteland of cyberspace itself, making it a safe and habitable environment for both agents and humans. The paper discusses how the basic infrastructure for beginning a terraforming effort is becoming more available. Designed specifically to exploit next-generation Internet capabilities, grid-based approaches provide a universal source of dynamically pluggable, pervasive, and dependable computing power, while guaranteeing levels of security and duality of service that will make new kinds of applications possible.