Product Description: Despite its haphazard growth, the Web hides powerful underlying regularities -- from the organization of its links to the patterns found in its use by millions of users. Many of these regularities have been predicted on the basis of theoretical models based on a field of physics -- statistical mechanics -- that few would have thought applicable to the social domain...read more

Product Description: The laws and methodology of physics are starting to provide powerful insights into the nature and dynamics of computation. This book contains a number of articles that illustrate how the fields of quantum mechanics, statistical mechanics and nonlinear dynamics can elucidate the nature of computation...read more

Product Description: Propelled by advances in software design and increasing connectivity, distributed computational systems are acquiring characteristics reminiscent of social and biological organizations. This volume is a collection of articles dealing with the nature, design and implementation of these open computational systems...read more