Yorick Wilks

Our second puzzle reflects the changing conception of computation which has been developing
within Computer Science over the past three decades.
The traditional conception of computation is that we compute an output as a function of an input, by an algorithmic process. This is the basic setting for the entire field of algorithms and complexity, for example. So what we are computing is clear — it is a function.
But the reality of modern computing: distributed,
global, mobile, interactive, multi-media, embedded, autonomous, virtual, pervasive —
forces us to confront the limitations of this viewpoint.
Traditionally, the dynamics of computing systems — their unfolding behaviour in space
and time — has been a mere means to the end of computing the function which specifies the
algorithmic problem which the system is solving.
In much of contemporary computing, the
situation is reversed: the purpose of the computing system is to exhibit certain behaviour.
The implementation of this required behaviour will seek to reduce various aspects of the
specification to the solution of standard algorithmic problems.

What does the Internet compute?

Surely not a mathematical function . . .
Moral: We need a theory of the dynamics of informatic processes, of interaction, and in-
formation flow, as a basis for answering such fundamental questions as :
• What is computed?
• What is a process?
• What are the analogues to Turing-completeness and universality when we are concerned
with processes and their behaviours, rather than the functions which they compute?

[Im not certain I understand the question, but it seems a nice one to ask anyway! YW]