In 1996, when the Internet started to emerge, it started to become apparent to evolutionary biologists that this was actually an extension of biological evolution.
Just as a multitude of different biological entities have combined to evolve into a life form of a higher complexity - that of a human for example - so were humans combining to create a higher level of complexity that incorporated the Internet.
The significance of this is that the evolutionary strategies of nature can be applied to human interaction with the Internet. These thoughts started to emerge in Peter Small's 1996 website, reproduced here in an abridged form.
This is an edited copy of a website created by Peter Small in 1996.
It sets out the ideas that emerged after creating the CD-ROM "How God Makes God" and writing the programming book "Lingo Sorcery - The Magic of Lists, Objects and Intelligent Agents".
It was at a time when the internet was in its infancy and the first browser (Netscape) had appeared. Here are the thoughts and ideas about future possibilities at that time.
These thoughts and ideas led to the writing of the book "Magical A-Life Avatars" (1998) and the three books contemplating the internet as an environment suitable for entrepreneurial ventures: "The Entrepreneurial Web","The Ultimate Game of Strategy" and "Web Presence" (2000-2001 ).
The internet and computer technology at that time was not sufficiently advanced to accommodate these ideas, but in 2018, with the advent of "The Cloud" they are ideally appropriate.
The key to appreciating the relevance of these ideas to the present day is to understand how the humungous amount of cheap memory storage in the cloud and fast internet speeds have enabled interactive activity to be focused client side as opposed to the more conventional server side focus.
This is important from the point of view of projects such as "Crowd-sourced Info Towns", where multiple versions of 'environments' can be stored in the cloud to be widely distributed to create systems that can allow multiple communities to collaborate in the sharing of information without having to use a common website.
More importantly, it became apparent that the Internet was more than a broadcasting system of a multitude of independent channels: it was a living, organic entity in its own right, capable of evolution, increasing complexity and self-organisation.
Note: The CD-ROM, "How God Makes God", referred to here is no longer available but an archiving site provides a functioning (if slow) copy at: https://archive.org/details/HowGodMakesGod
Please overlook the primitive nature of the appearance and page navigation. It was authored in 1996.
Introduction - What it is about
About How God Makes God
HGMG review comments
About Lingo Sorcery
The background
A freak chance in education
Wealth creation
Heuristic strategies
Lists and objects
Paradigms and Morphing
Objects in nature
Object oriented thinking
Object-oriented programming
A Conventional View of the Internet
Intranet - An OO definition
Object oriented view of the Internet
The illusions of bots and COISes
Peter Small August 1996
Email: peter@petersmall.com
Version 1.00
© Copyright 1996 Peter Small