A system and method of distributed computation based upon a novel partitioning of computer networks. In the distributed computing system of the present invention, instructions are disseminated to select agents on a computer network, each of which is a member of at least one 'path,' a path being an ordered set of one or more connected agents within the network. The computation is then performed by the agents along the path, and any results then returned. A computation to be performed is broken down into instructions executed on a unique ordered sequence of agents making up a path. This vastly increases the expressive power of a single network to be not only the sum of its parts, but the sum of all possible configurations of those parts on a graph. The basic components of the computing system are agents, probes and paths. The agents are interconnected forming a network and a path is an ordered sequence of agents. Information is exchanged between agents by the sending and receiving of probes between the agents in the network.
DISTRIBUTED COMPUTATION SYSTEM INCORPORATING AGENT NETWORK, PATHS AND ASSOCIATED PROBES