Author Description

This article discusses the community metaphor as the next stage of network computing. The first meeting in Kyoto was blessed with lovely weather. Though we did not organize a formal committee for this meeting, a number of social and computer scientists joined. Since the meeting was semi closed, besides a variety of invited presentations, a number of papers were submitted to the meeting from the US, Europe and Pacific Rim countries. The mixture of invited and selected papers made the meeting moderately open and attractive. Most of presentations made at the meeting are included in this volume. We also had plenty of discussion time during the meeting. Some of the discussion results are also included. From these papers, readers can get a clear image of the actual meeting. I would like to express my great appreciation of the co organizers, Toyoaki Nishida, Takao Terano and Fumio Hattori and all the participants who contributed to the meeting. I also wish to thank the local arrangement people of the meeting: they are Toshikazu Nishimura, Hirofumi Yamaki, Hideyuki Nakanishi, Keiki Takadama, Shoko Miyagawa and Yoko Kubota. Special thanks to Hirofumi Yamaki and Masayuki Okamoto, who did tremendous work for editing this volume. I also thank Andre Durand for a discussion on the ter co mmmu nityware. Though we have independently used this term, it appears that the term is a trademark of Durand Communication Inc.