Magical Web Avatars

The Sorcery of Biotelemorphic Cells

Peter Small

Preface

In 1996, there emerged a significant new development in the world of communications - the Internet protocol engine.

Pioneering the field was Allegiant's Marionet: a stand alone application, with no visible interface. This powerful little device just sits in RAM, occupying less than 100K of memory, acting like a system extension and accepting instructions from documents to facilitate the movement of messages and files across the Internet.

By the beginning of 1997, most major producers of application software and multimedia authoring packages were announcing (or hinting) they would be having Internet protocol engines built into their 1997 version releases.

These small special applications, or bolt on extras, enable individual computer documents to communicate and exchange data across the Internet. They provide all the necessary standard messaging protocols to allow documents to use the Internet and the Web without having to go through special servers.

In the new parlance of the Internet world this is known as "pushing" but the significance of this seemingly innocuous development is that it allows documents to be "brought to life". Documents, instead of being merely passive end-products of data processing operations, can now be designed to become contributing members of complex dynamic systems.

This paves the way for documents, not applications, to rule the Internet - ushering in a new phase which has no precedence in mass communication history. Documents can be receivers or broadcasters; their client and server roles can be interactively interchangeable. They can be designed to behave as smart agents: dealing in seemingly intelligent ways with servers, clients and each other - independent of human supervision or control. They will be able to change and modify each other giving systems the ability to adapt and evolve with minimal human intervention.

Such dramatic changes in the way the Internet can now be used owes little to any new breakthrough in computer programming or any revolutionary developments in hardware. The dramatic changes will be coming about as a result of push techniques, enabled by the internet protocol engines, copying the methods and techniques of biological systems.

Over the last ten years or so, immense changes have taken place in the way biological systems are perceived. No longer are biological cells seen as mysterious blobs of matter. They are now seen as a intricate computer systems which contain enumerable communicating objects. Molecules are seen as messages, documents and even information processors. The insides of cells are being treated as complex systems of interacting and cooperating components.

The cells themselves are no longer seen in isolation, they are viewed as integral components of more ephemeral composites of communicating and cooperating cells. Even at these higher levels of organization there is communication and cooperation between the ephemeral entities created by the groups of cells. These groups of groups are also seen as combining at even higher levels of organization to produce biological shapes and form which at an outward physical level combine to produce life forms.

Even at the level of a biological life form, this process of information exchange and cooperation continues to create larger and larger systems or hierarchic groupings. We know, as human beings, groups form as a result of communication and cooperation between individuals. We know that groups of individuals can act collectively to communicate and cooperate with each other. Groups form into communities and communities form into nations.

From simple molecules interacting with each other in a human cell, right up to the existence of advanced civilizations: all can all be explained in terms of push technology brought about by communicating and cooperating objects, structures and systems - systems within systems within systems within sytems.... The wonder, of the biological masterpieces created by nature, is not in the complexities of their final structures, but, in the underlying simplicity which brings it all together. This book is about applying such simplicity to the Internet where in all likelihood we shall soon be rivaling nature in the extravagance and magnificence of our creations.

Already we are using the techniques of evolutionary biology to design information systems. Object oriented programming techniques are enabling applications and services to be designed which go far beyond any individual designer's ability to comprehend their full complexity.

Systems are no longer being designed to be isolated or be regarded as stand alone products. More and more they are being designed to cooperate and interact with other systems. Systems are evolving into systems of systems with no overall control or authority.

Who or what will be in control, when all of our computer applications and systems are inter-locked into vast world wide interactive networks which are too complex for anyone to fully comprehend?

Imagine now, an organizing army of smart documents, acting like vast hordes of ants in an ant colony, building, changing, adapting and learning. This is what this book is about: understanding and designing such systems of control and manipulation. These ant-like documents will have the power to lead us who knows where?

One thing is certain, the human race is now on the verge of building a symbiotic relationship with an abstract entity which could turn out to be a dominant partner.

Paradoxically, this book is going to show you the practical steps which will encourage you to become a willing partner in the creation of this phenomenon.

What this book is going to do for you

To the vast majority of users and developers involved in the Internet, the significance of this revolutionary new development of protocol engines went unnoticed at the beginning of 1997. All previous mass communication systems have been based upon the paradigm of broadcasters broadcasting out to passive audiences; publishers printing for passive readerships.

People can visualize the idea of a changing environment where members of an audience or a readership are able to take part, or have a say, in the communication process, but, the idea of the vectors of communication themselves being involved in the process is something else.

It just isn't intuitive to understand how protocol engines can trigger a metamorphosis of the Internet and the World Wide Web into something spectacularly new - something that requires a radically new paradigm to appreciate and take advantage of.

These opportunities will NOT be found by taking a conventional view of the World Wide Web or by using the conventional paradigms of traditional media. Those paradigms are blind to the many other ways in which the Internet and the Web can be used.

The really big opportunities are going to be found by looking at the Internet in a different way, using the tools, methods and techniques of the newly emerging sciences of information processing and molecular biology, perhaps even some of the conceptual techniques of the ancients which they used to explain the unexplainable.

We shall be dealing with an object oriented world of Intranets and hybrids. We shall be dealing with the interplay between humans, smart documents, CD-ROMs, computers and the Internet. We shall be discovering a strange new world of information landscapes, of cybernetic structures and biotic mechanisms; exploring new and exciting ideas - which haven't been possible before the advent of the protocol engines which can now bring documents to "life".

take me to THE BOOK