A New Approach to Distributed Context-Aware Computing

We present the aether, a tree-structured, pervasive and active distributed context that is directly useable as an efficient medium for intensional computing. An aether allows participants to register over a network at arbitrary nodes in the context and listen to operations which selectively modify the context. Using a distributed model similar to an IRC channel, context-sensitive software components can engage in contextual discussion, affecting their combined runtime semantics. Discussion is given on the nature of the context, as well as the means of transmission and potential applications.