ABSTRACT
How several autonomous computers can communicate and cooperate to solve problems too large for a single computer.1
The potential power of multiple autonomous computers connected together in a network is raising high expectations in an ever increasing number of people. What was familiar before only to a group of specialists started to become clear to anybody with the advent of the first web navigator programs: something really new was happening, as is well expressed in the words of a recognized guru of popular science:
In the years roughly coincidental with the Netscape IPO, humans began animating inert objects with tiny slivers of intelligence, connecting them into a global field, and linking their own minds into a single thing. This will be recognized as the largest, most complex, and most surprising event on the planet.2
