With the rapid development of computers, the computing paradigms also witness continuous evolutions which have fundamentally changed our work and lifestyles. Today's computer systems still demand too much attention from people and thus keep the vision of disappearance of technology only a dream. Reasons for such problems should be analyzed and new computing architectures and paradigms developed. Transparent computing, based on recent developments of computer and network technologies, introduces new ideas and solutions to the blueprint of service-sharing computing.

This book offers a systematic discussion on the ideas and concept behind transparent computing based on the analysis of computer evolution and computing paradigms, their problems and related causes of traditional computing paradigms, and the underlying von Neumann architecture. It then proceeds to propose a new spatio-temporally extended von Neumann architecture based upon network thinking, and a new computing paradigm based on such new architecture transparent computing. It also further elaborates on the meta operating system (e.g., 4VP+), the method to realize transparent computing in local area network environments.

Key Features (1) Presents and summarizes the work of the authors, who have researched in ubiquitous/pervasive computing and transparent computing since 2000.

(2) Proposes transparent computing , a new computing paradigm which decouples software from the underlying hardware, and lets users freely select and run various operating systems on demand as services from any computing devices at any time.

(3) Introduces the meta operating system, and its implementation through 4VP+, the interactive protocols and virtualization layers to implement the functions of meta operating system.

(4) Provides application examples of transparent computing system, and discusses the future development of this new concept in the last two chapters.