This month, two special sections explore how software agents independently and through their interaction in multiagent systems are transforming the Internet’s already tumultuous character and mission. Functioning through the medium of autonomous actions, agents and agent systems move out into the Net’s distributed, large-scale, dynamic structure on behalf of often-anonymous servers and human users scattered […]
March 1999 - Vol. 42 No. 3
Features
Some U.S. elementary school computer workstations could put children at risk for developing poor postures and painful repetitive stress injuries, according to a Cornell University study. In the study, to be published in the May issue of the journal Computers in the Schools, researchers watched 95 elementary school children as they worked on computers in […]
Finland: The Unknown Soldier on the IT Front
Linus Torvalds, Jorma Ollila, and their accomplishments exemplify Finland's rapid rise as one of the most networked nations in the world.
Good News and Bad News on the Intellectual Property Front
For the past four years, my "Legally Speaking" columns have warned about overbroad and imbalanced proposals for digital copyright, database protection, and licensing of information legislation. Since I wrote my last column on these issues there have been some important developments. As to each, there is some good news and some bad news. One important […]
I was surprised to see Jakob Nielsen’s conclusions about the state of Web usability and the need for UI standards (Jan. 1998, p. 65), and having just come to the opposite set of conclusions in my column "View Source: Lessons from the Web’s Massively Parallel Development" in ACM’s networker (Dec. 1998, p. 56), I’d like […]
Viewpoint: Focus Groups, Theory or the Kid in the Garage?
A few years ago, a group of heavyweight thinkers attempted to invent interactive TV. There were product managers, human factors engineers, usability specialists, and designers of every conceivable variety—graphic designers, broadcast designers, interaction designers, industrial designers, and sound designers. There were also creative directors, producers, film directors, creative agents, software engineers and computer scientists. Expert […]
Over the last few years, the term "agents" has become popular, and consequently, much used and abused. Although several agent-based systems now exist on the network, most are essentially centralized on a single agent. However, the distributed, large-scale, dynamic nature of the Internet speaks to the need for open, flexible, and scalable solutions. This is […]
The energy market is ripe for emergent IT tools that may simply transform the utilities sector.
Networked Agents For Scientific Computing
How an ensemble of agents can conduct large-scale scientific simulations.
When the U.S. military faces a crisis, manpower and time are our most precious resources. Unfortunately, the software we employ during a crisis doesn’t always make the best use of our people or support a timely response. The commercial office automation products we use support editing and presentation of information, but their direct-manipulation interfaces require […]
Socialware: Multiagent Systems For Supporting Network Communities
Many of the social issues that live in real neighborhoods also reside on the Net. Now, with a little help from software agents, people can be linked together to form a multitude of new colonies.
Simulations in Economics and Management
Economics addresses this basic problem: There are n agents interacting with each other in m markets. We want to find out the equilibrium set of actions of each of the agents in each of the markets as well as the associated prices and quantities. As agents and markets increase in number, the computing power required […]
Agents For Process Coherence in Virtual Enterprises
At first glance, autonomy is a mixed blessing.
Multiagent Data Collection in Lycos
We proceed from a relatively weak notion of agency in cooperating software system components to describe the data collection activities of the Lycos Internet information retrieval services. The characteristics of agency of interest include autonomy, social ability, reactivity, and proactivity. The original and simple Lycos spiders, once implemented in Perl, have evolved into a true […]
Building Cognitively Rich Agents Using the SIM_AGENT Toolkit
Why your software agents will have emotions.
Agents in Tank Battle Simulations
Networks of computers can be used to produce a digital virtual environment (DVE) where multiple participants can interact. This technology is extremely attractive to the military to provide training simulations. By the use of mock-up vehicles and high-fidelity visual systems, trainees get a window onto a virtual world populated by simulated vehicles interacting over a […]
Let systems of Web-based competitive self-interested agents do the negotiating, buying, and selling.
Shoppers and sellers alike dispatch them into the digital bazaar to autonomously represent their best interests.
Seven Good Reasons For Mobile Agents
Dispatch your agents; shut off your machine.
To free your agents and yourself to get the best deals online, write them in Java. And hope everyone else does too.
This Java mobile agent technology offers security and persistence while maintaining a record of an agent's travels.
These Java mobile agents move comfortably throughout the Internet.
Staffing the Web with Interactive Characters
Intelligent agents in the form of personable characters interact with and serve human customers.
An XML Framework For Agent-Based E-Commerce
Emerging standards for commercial document exchange promise open business-to-business e-commerce.
Share the Ontology in XML-Based Trading Architectures
First bring semantic order to the world of XML.
Technical Opinion: Viewpoints on Legacy Systems
The Y2K problem and business process re-engineering have raised awareness of legacy systems. Even so, there is little consensus about what a legacy system is. The wide variety of interpretations hampers discussion. For example, business people are amazed that a profitable product can be called a legacy system. However, it has been asserted that IBM’s […]
Inside Risks: Bit-Rot Roulette
It’s obvious that our modern society is becoming immensely dependent on stored digital information, a trend that will only increase. Aspects of our culture that have routinely been preserved in one or another analog form are making transitions into the digital arena. Consumers who have little or no technical expertise are now using digital systems […]
