The use of local or global (Internet) networks has expanded since about 20 years, as a ground swell which is deeply transforming computer science, switchng from machine computer science to network (or mixed machine-network) computer science. Such a transformation entails not only technical improvements and innovations but also theoretical and linguistic questions regarding the description and the modelling of those network features: scattered or shared data or algorithms, reference to URL beyond file names and file paths, resort to information or even knowledge stored on the web, issues with the location and evolution of such ressources...

Mathematica participates into this scientific and technical revolution with a growing number of features that involve networks: grid computing, WolframAlpha, database access and now online Mathematica. I would not hesitate to bet on Mathematica (as a language and as an interface) to develop (at least contribute to develop) the corpus of this emerging network computer science. Hence the proposal of a discussion thread dedicated to this question.

Possible topics or questions are (but are not limited to):
- historical aspects (Arpanet...);
- the role of OS and how they should evolve;
- local or network project management with Mathematica;
- product lifecycle management (PLM);
- the need to get beyond the awkward association html-php(or javascript)-sql (and replace it with the clean Mathematica syntax);
- which extensions of the Mathematica language are required for network programming?
- which novel notebook interface would allow both local and network computation or navigation?
- which online features do we expect (access to / edition of notebooks or packages, courses, online books; management of structured sets of documents...)?
- which structures and interface features would facilitate the collective work of knowledge communities?
- what could be the combined roles of database programming and logic programming for information or knowledge processing?

Remi