Turing's legacy for the Internet
Miroslav Benda · IEEE Internet Computing · 1997
In 1936, when the world was computerless, Alan Turing invented the first virtual machine, now called the Universal Turing Machine (A. Turing, 1936). This concept provided a common ground for a theoretical exploration of the computable. Today, in a world with millions of computers linked to form a global computing network, we are again contemplating the virtues of virtual machines. Will a virtual machine, executing on millions of physical computing devices, be as useful in computing practice as Turing's machine is in computer theory? The author argues that it will and that its coming is inevitable. These considerations pertain to the delivery systems part of the Internet architecture which is presented.