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The cover blurb for the paperback edition of Ventus was graciously provided by Vernor Vinge, author of the classic A Fire Upon the Deep. He says that Ventus is a "milestone in science fiction about nanotech and fine-grained distributed systems." You'll probably recognize the term nanotech; it's a popular subject in SF lately. But what are fine-grained distributed systems? I had to look it up. It seems there's a movement in computer science that anticipates the way the Winds operate in Ventus. It's sometimes called "swarm computing", which is a great description of the Winds. But finding out how swarm computing works isn't that easy--a typical reference in the literature talks about a system that's "based on a correctness-proof-secure higher-order reflective self-extensible fine-grained distributed persistent fault-tolerant version-aware decentralized (no-kernel) object system." Ah. I see. It's actually not that difficult. The basic idea is that we're reaching the point where everything we manufacture is going to have a chip in it (you know, the "smart refrigerator" idea). Once everything has a chip in it, these chips are going to want to communicate. We're seeing this now with, for instance, the new Bluetooth protocol. And, once all these chips are communicating, they can be ganged together to form a kind of distributed computer that shares workload across all the various fridges, cell phones, squeeze toys and missiles that make up the network. A computing platform designed to work across such a wide range of small objects is a fine-grained distributed system. A swarm, if you will. If you'd like a little more theory on the subject, you can try the rather high-level discussion at the IEEE distributed systems site. In the novel Ventus, the individual components of the swarm are microscopic, and are embedded in everything--rocks, trees, animals... everything, that is, except people. The vast global network thus formed is known locally as The Winds, and it can perceive movements and changes in everything from continental weather patterns down to the health of individual insects. The problem is, it can't see into human beings; they are a mystery to the Winds, a disturbing one because humanity is constantly altering the carefully tuned environment of Ventus for its own purposes. As you can imagine, the Winds are not pleased... and there hangs (part of) the tale... < | >
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