Abstract
This paper aims to introduce Distributed Systems as a field where the ideas and methods of physics can potentially be applied, and to provide entry points to a wide literature. The contributions of Leslie Lamport, inspired by Relativity Theory, and of Edsger Dijkstra, which has the flavor of a growth process, are discussed at some length. The intent of the author is primarily to stimulate interest in the statistical physics community, and the discussions are therefore framed in a non-technical language; the author apologizes in advance to readers from the computer science side for the unavoidable impreciseness and ambiguities.
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