On the path to building a community of programs

Abstract

The grid project is the next step on the path to the creation of a worldwide artificial mind. For example, the Internet made it possible for people not to care about the place where the information is stored and how it is delivered. The grid allows people not to care about where and which resources are used to execute their programs. The next step will make it possible not to care about what programs are used to perform the desired tasks. It will be sufficient to set a task and programs will find and organize themselves so as to perform it. Even this step will not be the last one. All these features define the process of creating the universal mind from outside, that is, from the viewpoint of users. It is also important to see the internal substance of this process. From the inside, this is the process of creating a global community of programs.

In the first decades of software development, the key problem was creating increasingly complicated and clever programs. Beginning in the 1990s, the main problem changed: now, it is to ensure the coexistence and cooperative operation of programs. This is a quite objective process, and it is governed by certain laws of which we mention two. First, the structure of the community of programs and the means of their interaction are largely similar to the structure and means of interaction in human society. Second, the human society becomes increasingly dependent on the community of programs, while the community of programs gradually becomes less dependent on the participation of people in its activity. Some day, the community of programs will become all-sufficient. It is a very important and many-sided question how the relationship between the human society and the community of programs will develop, and we must start studying this problem now.

As the first step, I propose to build a model of the future community of programs involving researchers of various specialities. The study of this model will enable us to correctly guide the construction of the community of programs.