Perfect Disruption

Abstract

The Mental Agent paradigm has had some success in modeling and simulating human-like behavior. However, computing has changed dramatically from the time of its invention and we are in the midst of a “perfect disruption” brought on by the following:

• Hardware. Many-core architecture that will soon support thousands of threads in a process for widely-used software applications using semantic integration (see below).

• Software. Client cloud computing^1,2. in which information is permanently stored in servers on the Internet and cached temporarily on clients that range from single chip sensors, handhelds, notebooks, desktops, and entertainment centers to huge data centers. (Even data centers are clients that often cache their information to guard against geographical disaster.) Client cloud computing will provide much needed new capabilities including the following:
• maintaining the privacy of client information by storing it on servers encrypted so that it can be decrypted only by using the client’s private key. (The information is unencrypted only when cached on clients.)
• providing greater integration of user information obtained from servers of competing vendors without requiring them to interact with each other.
• providing better advertising relevance and targeting without exposing client privacy.
• Applications. Scalable semantic integration, e.g., integrating the following:
• calendars and to do lists
• email archives
• presence information including physical, psychological and social
• documents (including presentations, spread sheets, proposals, job applications, photos, videos, gift lists, memos, purchasing, contracts, articles, etc.)
• contacts (including social graphs)
• search results
• marketing and advertising relevance influenced by the above

This paper explains how this perfect disruption is causing a paradigm shift from Mental Agents to ORGS (Organizations of Restricted Generality^TM) as the foundation for implementing large-scale Internet applications.

For the continuation of the published article, please see the following:

Acknowledgments

Charles Petrie suggested the phrase “Perfect Disruption” and made other valuable suggestions for improvement. Jean-Pierre Briot, Jeremy Forth, Michael Genesereth, Fanya S. Montalvo and members of the Stanford Logic Group provided helpful discussion and comments.

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