We discuss which properties common-use artifacts should have to collaborate
without human intervention. We conceive how devices, such as mobile phones,
PDAs, and home appliances, could be seamlessly integrated to provide an
"ambient intelligence" that responds to the user's desires without requiring
explicit programming or commands. While the hardware and software technology to
build such systems already exists, as yet there is no standard protocol that
can learn new meanings. We propose the first steps in the development of such a
protocol, which would need to be adaptive, extensible, and open to the
community, while promoting self-organization. We argue that devices,
interacting through "game-like" moves, can learn to agree about how to
communicate, with whom to cooperate, and how to delegate and coordinate
specialized tasks. Thus, they may evolve a distributed cognition or collective
intelligence capable of tackling complex tasks.Comment: To be presented at 5th International Conference on Complex System
