The present article focuses on proactive computing. For the past 40 years, most of the IT research community has focused on interactive computing. It is time for a change. The computer science research community now enjoys a rare and exciting opportunity to redefine, its agenda and establish the new goals that will propel society beyond interactive computing and the human/machine breakpoint. A world in which networked computers outnumber human beings by a hundred or thousand to one, one should consider what these excess computers will be doing and craft a research agenda that can lead to increased human productivity and quality of life. The bulk of the IT industry is presently focused on office automation, e-commerce and their associated networking. Judging by the current research profile, an independent observer might believe that the distribution of new computers is dominated by the 150 million or so new laptop, desktop and server nodes that will power the growth of interactive computation. Active technologies are important in proactive environments for two reasons: the software running on networked embedded processors can be changed on the fly and by launching applets into the network, the lowliest of embedded processors can command resources of larger systems