Beyond the Information Age discusses a new way of thinking about computers, knowledge and understanding. See the editorial for more information....



Web Pages as Intelligent Systems

A web-page is an example of an intelligent-system that is potentially accessible by billions of people all over the planet. Primarily the web-page contains the knowledge and the web-master (the person or corporation that runs the web-site) and the user, are providing the understanding. But, there is a lot more going on here than meets the eye. The web-page itself contains procedural knowledge written in a computer programming language usually called HTML. This procedural knowledge combined with the understanding engine of the web-server computer, allow the web-page to understand text and mouse clicks from the user of the page. In a way you could say the web-page is alive since it understands and responds to input from its environment. Actually, the web-page and its understanding-engine server are not alive, but when you add in the people that use and maintain the web-page you have a complete living intelligent-system. The group of people with their computers is a living intelligent-system much in the same way that partners in a marriage form a living intelligent-system.

If we look at the lifetime of a living intelligent-system involving a web-page we can see that it is 'born' the day it is put up on a server, and it 'dies' when it is removed. Even though all the people who were ever involved with the web-page may still be alive, the intelligent-system no longer exists. This is the same with a marriage. A marriage begins with 'tying the knot' and ends in divorce or when either one of the partners dies. A divorce is a fixed knowledge set of documents that define the end of a marriage.

The preceding examples are just two of trillions upon trillions of intelligent-systems that operate here on Planet Earth. Every living thing is an intelligent-system, every group of living things working together are living intelligent-systems, every thing you do or think about is an intelligent-system, and even your body is built up of billions of intelligent-systems within every cell of your body. With all these intelligent-systems around isn't it amazing that this is probably the first chapter ever written about them?




Last Update: 2006-Dec-23