NPAC made the commitment in January 1994 that Web technology would be key to essentially all its projects. This decision was based on the observation that the Web is developing technologies for a general open distributed computing model that can in fact be adapted for any important problem whether it be distance education, health care information systems or parallel computing. We believe that software design is not just an abstract science but must build in the basic economic principle that in
general the largest market will generate the best software because it has both the greatest competition and the best amortization of development dollars. Thus we envisage the basic engine where the world has the largest market generates very good general purpose distributed computing software. Note this is initially aimed at "information" systems but can be applied to simulation for surely a complex physical simulation is "just" producing a rich form of information. This general worldwide web technology is then applied to particular networks (such as IntraNets for a corporation) and particular application areas such as Web-based Telemedicine.
We also believe that the Web is pioneering a new enterprise model different from that of traditional hierarchically organized organizations. Creative minds around the world are being allowed to collaborate to together produce large systems and this approach builds in community criticism and ability to harness ability whether it may be in a way that is fundamentally different from and better than previous paradigms.