I think this is a really interesting concept..
Imagine an internet where friendly computer viruses are just as prevalent as unfriendly ones. Without any operator intervention, a friendly virus “attacks” a host system and installs itself, then running and applying patches to close known holes on that system, including the one it came in on. Once it’s done it goes off and finds dozens of other hosts to continue its work safeguarding the internet.
That’s what’s going on here. The result is that computer networking tends to become more and more organic in nature and computing in general becomes much more collaborative.
But it also may be a mechanism for the distribution of software, software updates, or even event-driven information.
Regardless, the notion of digital antibodies chasing their bacterial foes around the internet is quite an appealing one.
VERY William Gibson.
-Ian.