Actually, this is a very old thing. It is genuinely architectural to diginumeric networks. Including neural networks.
This was my area for the international public operators packet switch system (IPSS) that was strategically obsoleted when the IETF internet took over in 1986. It is more or less related to the OSI Presentation layer n°6 which is missing in the TCP/IP model. This embarasses us a lot (multilinguism, smart networking, security, capabilities, etc… and network negentropy are missing). Web agents are a part of a response: RFC 1958 provides the architectural solution, which states “The network’s job is to transmit datagrams as efficiently and flexibly as possible. Everything else should be done at the fringes.”.
The problem was to understand how to introduce the related “extended network services” at the “fringe” (what it exactly is) in the TCP/IP architecture. The great idea was to introduce them on the flow (at the edges) and not at a node (what would have changed too many things).
However, you are right: this has not taken off yet as we still all are TCP/IP “confined”. This is why the first thing is to do it within the TCP/IP architecture. I feel HTTP and JMAP are now stabilized enough for us, “interlinked-users” (there is no “end” in an internet system) to invest our “BTW” (“beyond the wall”, i.e. citizen) R&D on the matter. Because we need it in order to live together out of GAFGov control.
I therefore started http://rfc.wiki to concentrate and translate the RFCs I feel concerned.
