Agoric Computing seems like a new name given to a very common mechanism employed by many programs in the software industry for decades. It is quite common to want to balance the use of resources such as time, memory, disk space, etc. Accurately estimating these things ahead of their use may use substantial resource by itself. Instead, a much simpler formula is associated with each resource usage type and that stands as a proxy for the actual cost. Some kind of control program uses these cost functions to decide how best to allocate tasks and use actual resources. The algorithms to compute costs and manipulate the market can be as simple or as complex as the designer desires.
This control program can be thought of as an operating system but it might also be done in the context of tasks within a single process. This might result in markets within markets.
I doubt many software engineers would think of these things in terms of the market analogy. For one thing, they would gain little constraining their thinking to a market-based system. I suspect many software engineers might be fascinated to think of such things in terms of markets but only for curiosity sake. I don’t see how this point of view really solves any problems for which they don’t already have a solution.
Agoric Computing seems like a new name given to a very common mechanism employed by many programs in the software industry for decades. It is quite common to want to balance the use of resources such as time, memory, disk space, etc. Accurately estimating these things ahead of their use may use substantial resource by itself. Instead, a much simpler formula is associated with each resource usage type and that stands as a proxy for the actual cost. Some kind of control program uses these cost functions to decide how best to allocate tasks and use actual resources. The algorithms to compute costs and manipulate the market can be as simple or as complex as the designer desires.
This control program can be thought of as an operating system but it might also be done in the context of tasks within a single process. This might result in markets within markets.
I doubt many software engineers would think of these things in terms of the market analogy. For one thing, they would gain little constraining their thinking to a market-based system. I suspect many software engineers might be fascinated to think of such things in terms of markets but only for curiosity sake. I don’t see how this point of view really solves any problems for which they don’t already have a solution.