Viral Communications

= project, and concept by David Reed

Project

"focuses on constructing agile, scalable, collaborative systems that permit uncontrolled growth, minimal power use, and maximum ability to intercommunicate, with viral architectures moving the intelligence from the trunk to the leaves. Centered in the MIT Media Laboratory"

URL = https://dl.media.mit.edu/viral/

Concept

"We define a Viral Communications Architecture to be one where the elements are scaleable, and where each new elements adds capacity to the system, so that it can be adopted incrementally and gains accelerating value with scale."

- David Reed (source ?)

From the reading notes of Michel Bauwens, 2005:

The new meshwork of devices are ad hoc, they need no backbone or infrastructure, but use their neighbours and peers to constitute themselves (i.e. through 'viral communicators'). They can scale without bounds. The main enabler are 'digital radios tht can expand spectrum capacity as they are using it. Reed calls WiFi (802.11) unreliable.

Viral systems gain momentum as they scale, and must not require a critical mass before they are useful. Each new element must not deplete capabilities but enhance them. Each adoption is a win-win decision.

The two primary design principles of viral architecture are:

1) scalability: the ability to grow without bounds

2) independence: its elements operate autonomously + it must be future-proof and adaptable