Next: Agents and appropriation
What's an Agent, Anyway? A Sociological Case Study
Abstract:
The term `agent' has been picked up, widely appropriated,
and in many cases misappropriated, by technical publications, lay
publications, and many researchers in computer science. I examine some
of the appropriations and misappropriations, talk about their reasons
and implications, and delve into a case study of an agent that is used
to illustratively define what I consider an agent to be, and why
many of the current uses of the term are misleading. The agent I
consider is Julia, a TinyMUD robot of the Maas-Neotek family, all of
whom have been in almost constant use at several sites on the Internet
for the last two or three years. I also speak at length about the
sociology of such agents, what we might expect to find in the future,
and why sociology is such an important aspect to consider when
investigating agent-oriented programming.
Lenny Foner