  We use ideas from distributed computing and game theory to study dynamic and
decentralized environments in which computational nodes, or decision makers,
interact strategically and with limited information. In such environments,
which arise in many real-world settings, the participants act as both economic
and computational entities. We exhibit a general non-convergence result for a
broad class of dynamics in asynchronous settings. We consider implications of
our result across a wide variety of interesting and timely applications: game
dynamics, circuit design, social networks, Internet routing, and congestion
control. We also study the computational and communication complexity of
testing the convergence of asynchronous dynamics. Our work opens a new avenue
for research at the intersection of distributed computing and game theory.
