Abstract
Algorithms have been around for as long as humans have been trying to calculate. In the Middle Ages, their execution was delegated to machines. In 1936, Alan Turing proposed a universal machine, capable of executing all conceivable algorithms, and thus gave birth to computers and computer science. The invention of networks, from the 1960s onwards, took distributed computing even further, connecting computers in large networks like the Internet, and processors in small networks within each computer. The aim was to create a super-machine, indestructible and ultra-fast. But the quest for these " superpowers " led to the loss of universality. Distributed algorithms study the conditions for recovering Turing's universality, or achievable forms of restricted universality.
