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Internet Computing

A lovely volume graced my desk recently — atleast, as gracefully as a hardbound, 1,100-page book can. The Practical Handbook of

Internet Computing,1 edited by my predecessor asInternet Computing’s editor in chief, MunindarSingh, is a collection of 57 chapters that attemptto define the space of, well, Internet computing.

Applications of Internet ComputingThe book is divided into six parts. It begins with“Applications,” 11 examples of systems you canbuild over the Internet, such as voice-over-IP tele-phony, digital libraries, and collaboration environ-ments. Eleven examples, of course, do not exhaustthe list of possible Internet applications; devotingthe entire 1,100 pages to applications at this levelof detail wouldn’t begin to exhaust the possibilities.

Starting with applications is a sign of anemerging trend. Traditional books in science,mathematics, and engineering often take a top-down approach. After hand waving at why thetopic is important, they begin with a collection ofprinciples, progress through an increasingly com-plex set of technologies, continue with techniques,and finally conclude with detailed examples ofhow the treasures related in the previous chaptersmight actually be applied. In computer science,this unfolds by starting with the data structuresand algorithmic analysis of a domain, algorithmsapplicable to that domain, and then following witha prescriptive description of the right way to dothings. Only at the end of the book do we see the“real-world examples” meant to illustrate the high-level points of the rest of the text. A critical motifof standard computer science is that the techniquesand technology illustrated in the first parts of thebook are useful for far more than the particularapplications at the end.

However, over the past decade, pressure hasincreased, especially from funding agencies, tofocus on harnessing the power of information sys-

tems in the service of other fields — that is, “bioin-formatics” rather than applying database or searchtechnology to biology. A handbook that starts withapplications is a signpost of this trend.

This isn’t necessarily bad. Being application-centered has many virtues. Real applications aregreatly informative to technology. The trick is topartner with application areas, rather than be-coming subordinate, and to emerge with a coher-ent discipline rather than a collection of islandtricks. It will be a great win if we can apply thesearch mechanisms invented in bioinformatics tologistics or animation, and a great loss if themechanisms of bioinformatics turn out to be onlyabout biology.

Internet Computing:The Rest of the Handbook The book regresses to a more conventional histor-ical development in the next section, “EnablingTechnologies.” The theme here is technologiesdeveloped elsewhere that have both become criti-cal to the Internet and flourished because of it.Examples of such technologies include informa-tion retrieval, agents, and digital rights manage-ment. (I suspect that workers in these fields findthem no more subordinate to Internet computingthan computer scientists find their work in bioin-formatics subordinate to actual biology.)

The “Information Management” sectionclimbs up a semantic ladder, going from chapterson the syntactic (XML), through heterogeneousdata techniques, and on to Web semantics. Thebook then descends to the high-level fluiddynamics of Internet plumbing in a section on“Systems and Utilities,” touching on topics suchas directory protocols, middleware, and caching.The concluding sections deal with “Engineeringand Management” (primarily software engineer-ing, various security issues, and network man-agement) and a grab bag of “Systemic Matters”about social issues and governance.

4 NOVEMBER • DECEMBER 2005 Published by the IEEE Computer Society 1089-7801/05/$20.00 © 2005 IEEE IEEE INTERNET COMPUTING

From the Editor in Chief...

Robert E. Filman • filman@computer.org

Is Internet Computing a Field?The handbook’s scope engenders twoquestions: first, is this a representativedescription of the field of Internetcomputing, and, more concretely, isInternet computing a field?

It’s a solid collection. Most papersin the book are directly informative tothe reader and succeed at describingtheir territory at a level at which theeducated computer professional cancome to understand the issues andapproaches involved. However, theoverall feeling is one of omission — 57chapters barely scratch the surface ofall the applications and technologiesassociated with the Internet. I can’thelp feeling an echo of the Alan Perlisaphorism, “If you have a procedurewith 10 parameters, you probablymissed some.”

Science divides itself into disci-plines, and scientific disciplines tend todivide themselves into subdisciplines.This division is sometimes based on thetopic being studied. For example, biol-ogy studies “living things.” Subdivisioncan also be based on the particular

basic assumptions and techniquesbeing applied. For example, statistics,operations research, and artificialintelligence all try to glean under-

standing from models of the world, butdiffer in their focus on how to con-struct and manipulate those models;economics, psychology, and sociology

IEEE INTERNET COMPUTING www.computer.org/internet/ NOVEMBER • DECEMBER 2005 5

Internet Computing

IEEE INTERNET COMPUTINGIEEE Computer Society Publications Office10662 Los Vaqueros CircleLos Alamitos, CA 90720

EDITOR IN CHIEFRobert E. Filman • filman@computer.org

ASSOCIATE EDITOR IN CHIEFLi Gong • li.gong@ligong.comDoug Lea • dl@cs.oswego.edu

EDITORIAL BOARDHelen Ashman • hla@cs.nott.ac.ukJean Bacon • jean.bacon@cl.cam.ac.ukElisa Bertino • bertino@cerias.purdue.eduScott Bradner • sob@harvard.eduJunghoo Cho • cho@cs.ucla.edukc claffy • kc@caida.orgSiobhán Clarke • siobhan.clarke@cs.tcd.ieFred Douglis • f.douglis@computer.orgIan Foster • foster@cs.uchicago.eduMonika Henzinger • monika@google.comMichael N. Huhns • huhns@sc.eduLeonard Kleinrock • lk@cs.ucla.eduSamuel Madden • madden@csail.mit.eduDaniel A. Menascé • menasce@cs.gmu.edu

Chris Metz • chmetz@cisco.comCharles J. Petrie • petrie@nrc.stanford.edu(EIC emeritus)

Krithi Ramamritham • krithi@cse.iitb.ac.inMichael I. Schwartzbach • mis@brics.dkMunindar P. Singh • singh@ncsu.edu(EIC emeritus)

Craig Thompson • cwt@uark.eduAndrew Tomkins • atomkins@yahoo-inc.comSteve Vinoski • vinoski@ieee.orgDan S. Wallach • dwallach@cs.rice.eduJim Whitehead • ejw@soe.uscs.edu

IEEE Communications Society LiaisonG.S. Kuo • gskuo@ieee.nccu.edu.tw

STAFFLead Editor: Rebecca L. Deuelrdeuel@computer.orgGroup Managing Editor: Steve WoodsStaff Editors: Kathy Clark-Fisher, JennyFerrero, and Brandi OrtegaProduction Editor: Monette VelascoMagazine Assistant: Hazel Koskyinternet@computer.orgGraphic Artist: Alex TorresContributing Editors: Cheryl Baltes, Greg Goth,

Keri Schreiner, Alison Skratt, and Joan TaylorBusiness Development Manager: Sandy BrownPublisher: Angela Burgessaburgess@computer.orgAssociate Publisher: Dick PriceMembership/Circulation MarketingManager: Georgann CarterAdvertising Supervisor: Marian Anderson

CS Magazine Operations CommitteeBill Schilit (chair), Jean Bacon, Pradip Bose,Doris L. Carver, Norman Chonacky, George Cybenko, John C. Dill, Frank E. Ferrante, Robert E. Filman,Forouzan Golshani, David Alan Grier, Rajesh Gupta, Warren Harrison, James Hendler, M. Satyanarayanan

CS Publications BoardMichael R. Williams (chair), Michael R. Blaha,Mark Christensen, Roger U. Fujii, SorelReisman, Jon Rokne, Bill Schilit, Linda Shafer,Steven L. Tanimoto, Anand Tripathi

Technical cosponsor:

IC Welcomes New Editorial Board Members

Junghoo Cho is an assistant professor in the Department of Com-puter Science at the University of California, Los Angeles. His mainresearch interests are in the study of the evolution, management,retrieval, and mining of the World Wide Web.Cho has a BS in physicsfrom Seoul National University and a PhD in computer science fromStanford University.He has published several research papers in inter-national journals and conference proceedings and serves on programcommittees of several international conferences, including SIGMOD,

Very Large Databases (VLDB), and World Wide Web. Cho has received both the NSFCareer Award and the IBM Faculty Award. Contact him at cho@cs.ucla.edu.

Andrew Tomkins is a senior research scientist at Yahoo Research.His interests lie in measurement, modeling, algorithms, and analyticsfor large heterogeneous datasets such as the World Wide Web.Priorto joining Yahoo,he spent eight years at IBM’s Almaden Research Cen-ter, where he headed the information management principles groupand served as chief scientist of the WebFountain project.Tomkins hasa PhD in computer science from Carnegie Mellon University.He haspublished more than 50 technical papers, including two that won best

paper awards at the World Wide Web conference. He also serves on various programcommittees and editorial boards. Contact him at atomkins@yahoo-inc.com.

all try to explain why people do thethings they do, but differ on theassumed primary motivations andinteresting conclusions.

Ernest Rutherford famously ob-served, “All science is either physics orstamp collecting,” contrasting datagathering (for example, collectingsamples of species of beetles) withmathematically formulated theories.

To my mind, this 57-chapter definitionof Internet computing resembles acomputational stamp collection — hereare many of the exotic specimens youcan find on the Internet.

“Biology is the study of livingorganisms” is a fine definition becausethe domain is both fairly well delimit-ed and has a certain uniformity. Allliving things reproduce and decreaseentropy, and mechanisms such asDNA, metabolism, and evolution findthemselves applied consistently to thedomain of living things.

Saying that Internet computing is“the study of anything having to dowith the Internet” is clearly less satis-factory. It is a definition tied tooclosely to a particular moment intechnology. When computing mecha-nisms have pervasively spread to everydoorknob and plumbing fixture, com-puters have become as embedded inthe natural fabric of economic exis-tence as printed language, and inter-connectivity is as omnipresent as radioreception, will it still be Internet com-puting? (Although you might counter,“When we’ve genetically engi-neered/nanotechnologied animals anddevices with both inorganic andorganic parts, will biologists still be theones studying them?)

Principles of Internet ComputingOf course, we can hardly expect toreduce Internet computing to some-thing akin to Schrödinger equations.Rather, I’d prefer to follow Peter Den-ning’s lead2 and ask, “What are theunderlying principles we use to defineInternet computing?” From Denning’spoint of view, such principles are thefundamental stories we use to explainthings. For computer science as awhole, he cites five guiding princi-ples: computation (algorithms, com-plexity, and the like), communication(such as Shannon entropy and datatransmission), coordination (human-computer and computer-computerinterfaces), automation (artificial

intelligence and machine learning),and recollection (storage hierarchiesand search).

I’d really like to see a set of neatlycrafted principles that define Internetcomputing. There will be consider-able overlap with Denning’s princi-ples, just as there is considerableoverlap between Internet computingand computer science as a whole.(One measure of this overlap was asmall analysis I once performed. IC isone of about a dozen magazines pub-lished by the IEEE Computer Society.Like IC, these magazines generallytend to have themes for each issue.The year I counted, half of that year’sthemes could have been IC themes.On the other hand, half could not.)

At first glance, the most basicInternet computing principles will beabout communication — the transfer ofinformation over a distance. Thinkingabout information leads to the nextfew steps: the nature of things thatmight communicate (people, concep-tually passive data repositories, activecomputational agents), protocols (thekinds of conversations that communi-cants might have), and content (notonly the generic form of content, butalso how to organize it for efficientretrieval). Internet computing, as asubdiscipline of computer science, thusemphasizes technologies for efficientand meaningful communication, rath-er than computation or the automationof computation.

I n a future column, I’ll explore thistheme in greater depth, seeking to

define more specific and principledboundaries for this emergingsubdiscipline.

References

1. M.P. Singh, ed., The Practical Handbook of

Internet Computing, Chapman & Hall/CRC,

2005.

2. P. Denning, “Great Principles of Comput-

ing,” Comm. ACM, vol. 46, no. 11, 2003, pp.

15–20.

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