Ancient Greeks help build better computer networks

Davey Winder
Monday, 04 August 2008 19:11

Your IT - Home IT

There can be no doubting that the period under investigation did, indeed, herald many important change and developments. In particular the emergence of states, which in and of itself involved finding new ways to organise production as well as consumption.

Yet squaring this off against any kind of relevancy to computer science in general and global ubiquitous computing specifically will take a real genius, it seems to me. So over to Professor Foxhall for the explanation:

"By investigating many crafts, we explore the impact different technologies had on each other" she says, continuing "the researchers will apply their understanding of knowledge transfer in antiquity to propose new computing paradigms based on code and data mobility over wide area networks."

Aha, all is becoming a little less cloudy. Because these kind of global ubiquitous computing models provide them means for software components to use whatever resources are available in other nodes, as well as more reliable distribution channels enabled by better connectivity, the idea is to study how ancient craft-production and exchange was connected.

"We aim to find good metaphors for new modalities of interaction and production in global ubiquitous computing" Professor Foxhall concludes "By harnessing the past, we aim to find new solutions for future computational systems that can operate in resource-limited environments."