Abstract

Present day computer systems are fragile and unreliable. Human beings are involved in the care and repair of computer systems at every stage in their operation. This level of human involvement will be impossible to maintain in future. Biological and social systems of comparable and greater complexity have self-healing processes which are crucial to their survival. It will be necessary to mimic such systems if our future computer systems are to prosper in a complex and hostile environment. This paper describes strategies for future research and summarizes concrete measures for the present, building upon existing software systems.

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