A new company founded by a longtime technologist is setting out to create a vast public database intended to be read by computers rather than people, paving the way for a more automated Internet in which machines will routinely share information.
Botnets are secretly installing themselves on thousands or even millions of personal computers, banding these computers together into an unwitting army of zombies, and using the collective power of the dragooned network for spam and committing Internet crimes.
From the billions of documents that form the World Wide Web and the links that weave them together, computer scientists and a growing collection of start-up companies are finding new ways to mine human intelligence.
A global race is under way to reach the next milestone in supercomputer performance, many times the speed of today's most powerful machines. And beyond the customary rivalry in the field between the United States and Japan, there is a new entrant - China - eager to showcase its arrival as an economic powerhouse.
The internet is entering a new phase of collaboration that many developers think Many Internet developers think will shift power away from old-line media and software companies while rapidly bringing about an age of computerized "augmentation" by blending the skills of tens of thousands of individuals.
A group of European computer researchers have demonstrated that it is possible to insert a software virus into radio frequency identification tags, part of a microchip-based tracking technology in growing use in commercial and security applications.
Researchers at the University of San Francisco are experimenting with what they are calling "flash mob supercomputing" by organizing hundreds of participants to gather and hook their personal computers together into a supercomputer.
Intel scientists say that they have made silicon chips that can switch light like electricity, blurring the line between computing and communications and presenting a vision of the digital future that will allow computers themselves to span cities or even the entire globe.
As perhaps the clearest evidence yet of the computing power of sophisticated but inexpensive video-game consoles, the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has assembled a supercomputer from a mere 70 Sony PlayStation 2's.
The Pentagon is constructing a computer system that could create a vast electronic dragnet, searching for personal information as part of the hunt for terrorists around the globe ? including the United States.