Zhuge and Shi, both academic researchers at the Key Lab of Intelligent Information Processing, in the Institute of Computing Technology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, have written a fascinating work, in which they outline the architecture of a future "eco-grid": a harmoniously evolved interconnection environment. They foresee the Internet gradually falling into disorder, due to the pressure of its exponential growth. Its replacement, on whose design they are working, will be based on the principles that have permitted a complex ecosystem to evolve, and sustain itself, over the ages, since the formation of our planet.

The design they envisage incorporates an underlying idealistic and optimistic notion of how the eco-grid will evolve, into a harmonious entity, capable of benefiting all of human society. They appear to underestimate the capability of the human species to use the capabilities instrumentally, to serve a variety of purposes, many of them malignant in intent, as evidenced by the use of the Internet for pornography and pedophilia, and other technologies having negative effects unforeseen by their designers. It is not clear to what extent their architecture is a self-regulating mechanism, or to what extent its regulations are imposed by its designers. If it is the latter, the authors have not faced up to the problems created by contested value systems. Indeed, under such circumstances, the eco-grid will be subject to many of the disruptive forces that affect the Internet.

The article does not attempt to guess what technologies will support the construction of the eco-grid, and it is interesting to note that, among the list of relevant principles, rules, and models, technology and engineering are not mentioned. Perhaps the article should be regarded as a manifesto, to start a debate, rather than a blueprint for our future.