This paper unveils and motivates an ambitious programme of hidden algebraic research in software engineering, beginning with our general goals, continuing with an overview of results, and including some future plans. The main contribution is powerful hidden coinduction techniques for proving behavioral correctness of concurrent systems; several mechanical proofs are given using OBJ3. We also show how modularization, bisimulation, transition systems, concurrency and combinations of the functional, constraint, logic and object paradigms fit into hidden algebra. 1. Introduction