I'm speaking at the BYU Computer Science Departments colloquium on April 17th at 11am in 1170 TMCB. Readers of this blog are cordially invited (campus map). The title of my talk will be "Programming the Internet." I'm taking some inspiration from Rohit Khare's statement that

The future of software development requires integrating network services that are very far away, and owned by strangers.

Here's the first draft of the abstract for my talk:

Programming on the Internet means integrating network services that are very far away and owned by strangers. Thus, programming the Internet requires that we understand issues raised by a new type of module (network services instead of objects), latency, and decentralization (contrasted with mere distribution). This talk will explore those issues, current research and techniques for exploiting or mitigating them, and areas for future research.

The body of the talk will draw from research, innovations, and developments in the areas of Web Services, digital identity, and active intermediaries (including web service routers, switches, and proxies). If you have ideas or pointers on any of these areas that I ought to cover, please let me know. I'll post a future refinement of my ideas as the talk grows closer and, of course, the slides once its done.