Collaboration between Human and Artificial Societies

The full title of the HCM network project behind this volume is VIM: A virtual multicomputer for symbolic applications. The three strands which bound the network together were parallel systems, advanced compilation techniques andarti?cialintelligence witha commonsubstrate in the programminglanguage Lisp. The initial aim of the project was to demonstrate how the combination of these three technologies could be used to build a virtual multicomputer ? an ephemeral, persistent machine of available heterogeneous computing resources ? for large scale symbolic applications . The system would support a virtual processor abstraction to distribute data and tasks across the multicomputer, the actual physical composition of which may change dynamically.