info:doi/10.1038/440411a 2006-03-23T00:00:00Z 2006-03-23T00:00:00Z Vernor Vinge © 2006 Nature Publishing Group Nature 440 7083 411 411 0028-0836 1476-4679 (?-mix:\s+\W+|\W+\s+|\s+|\/) Internet have their computers research creativity software than power such world users will social plus has can machine millions even exploit create networks search tools participants FOSS own collaboration need researchers MMORPGs projects people between virtual online new games become there more know human experiment these provide those content most Even near including scientific investment many Internet-connected used programmes example some already things been linguists enormous layer Second system proprietary products tiny groups extend Life not open-source they processing website devices future add at itself combat do subjects provides enlisting its range worlds services science end resources today greater both disciplines genre multiple interested which communication something communications occurs considering problems sensor neighbours how combinations GNU widespread significant realism digital notion al hundreds It's directly dwarfs but present-day hunts ensemble larger locations effector through element experimental consumers networking artificial-intelligence when infrastructure sum pre-designed significantly bringing Perhaps experiments often influence physics beings possible database produce driven computerized study possibilities until unrelated Gaia grows had adventure numerous worth Linux facts sensing financial deal customize labs megaproject enterprise beyond barriers make EverQuest number points Building preference role-playing solutions Among 15 past now free questions Another World generate music academic language connections parts part virtual-world observing growing sensors mapping programming gives jargon trillions years enthusiasm Google available integrate specialties large-scale prepare anything ways levels operating coincident contemporary humans artefacts popular increase cooperation 1,000 glimpse rather all investigated technical total simulations hundred People any complementary highest Salganik SETI@home ran game Some vivid quality convenient players visual Beyond three-dimensional delivered also importantly popularity links forge continue platform essence engines real-time skill simply demands extraterrestrial way defence devise interest architecture hardware machines implicit times few three then connecting results eventually harvested attracting ad Much improvements quest built 14,000 depends network-connected alive capabilities thus possibility Croquet publicly Earth other intelligence databases computing called et likely uses proteomics layers How large mixed flexible massively alternatives information All government seeking our beneath data one planetary noticed action million recruited together quick effectors low-cost come into prime-number Thus where 1990s coordinated sociology out tool Companies Warcraft Interested educational leaked exists improve allows obtained venue across there. can't least worthy designs created project sociologists grid using trials Such budgets communicate early enhancing changed websites long-duration lack architectures hoc matched might medical multiplayer feature involving bridge get up important according represents psychological (?-mix:\.\s+(?=[A-Z])) All this points to ways that science might exploit the Internet in the near future Among other things, these improvements will add a layer of networking beneath what we have today, to create a world come alive with trillions of tiny devices that know what they are, where they are and how to communicate with their near neighbours, and thus, with anything in the world And more than any megaproject of the past, the essence of the Internet is to provide coordinated processing of information Another genre of MMORPGs lack a significant combat or quest element and are more often called "virtual worlds" As such, the total Internet software and infrastructure investment dwarfs the budgets of scientific research programmes and even of many government defence programmes Beyond that, we know that hardware will continue to improve Building on the popularity of SETI@home — an experiment that uses Internet-connected computers to search for extraterrestrial intelligence — and prime-number hunts, there are now physics, medical and proteomics projects enlisting the enthusiasm of people (and their computers) across the world Companies such as Google provide users with tools to integrate search and mapping services into their own websites Even experimental sociology is possible: in their study of social influence on music preference, Salganik et al . recruited more than 14,000 subjects through a popular website, ran online trials on these subjects, and then obtained results directly from their experiment website Even online games are attracting academic interest FOSS products provide low-cost and flexible alternatives to proprietary software FOSS tools can be mixed and matched with proprietary software to deal with an enormous range of projects from quick, ad hoc combinations of data harvested from multiple locations to large, long-duration experiments For example, the virtual world Second Life has the visual realism of many MMORPGs, but it exists as a venue for the participants rather than as a pre-designed adventure For example, there is at least one open-source virtual-world platform, Croquet , which allows users to customize and extend its architecture at all levels For linguists and sociologists, new questions can be investigated simply by observing what occurs on the publicly available Internet For researchers seeking resources, these are facts worth considering For some disciplines, the Internet itself has become a research tool: grid computing has been used to exploit the power of millions of Internet-connected machines How can we prepare for such a future? Perhaps that is the most important research project for our creativity machine In 15 years, we are likely to have processing power that is 1,000 times greater than today, and an even larger increase in the number of network-connected devices (such as tiny sensors and effectors) In the 1990s, we had an early glimpse of the power of this new creativity machine: computers plus networks plus interested people delivered free and open-source software (FOSS) products of the highest quality, including the GNU/Linux operating system In the end, computers plus networks plus people add up to something significantly greater than the parts In the social, human layers of the Internet, we need to devise and experiment with large-scale architectures for collaboration Interested users are numerous and have their own resources It also represents an enormous financial investment that is driven by the demands of hundreds of millions of consumers It has already changed the way we do science, most importantly by enhancing collaboration between researchers It's the sum of three things: a few hundred million computers, a communication system connecting those computers, and some millions of human beings using those computers and communications MMORPGs (massively multiplayer online role-playing games), such as World of Warcraft and EverQuest, feature vivid three-dimensional action involving both cooperation and combat Much of the planetary sensing that is part of the scientific enterprise will be implicit in this new digital Gaia People power The notion of enlisting users to create content is widespread on the contemporary Internet Second Life provides a range of software tools, including a programming language, that gives participants the power to create artefacts according to their own designs Some games have millions of players Such virtual worlds have already been used for educational projects, and are worthy of psychological and social research The Internet will have leaked out, to become coincident with Earth The ensemble eventually grows beyond human creativity The possibilities do not end there The present-day Internet provides convenient connections between computerized labs, simulations and research databases This creativity machine is the Internet Thus the game depends on the skill and creativity of its participants to generate content To become what? We can't know until we get there. We humans have built a creativity machine We need linguists and artificial-intelligence researchers to extend the capabilities of search engines and social networks to produce services that can bridge barriers created by technical jargon and forge links between unrelated specialties, bringing research groups with complementary problems and solutions together — even when those groups have not noticed the possibility of collaboration We need to exploit the growing sensor/effector layer to make the world itself a real-time database info:doi/10.1126/science.1121066 3