8.5.1 Before I delve into the various agent technologies being developed and the Information Personae, it may be wise to step back and define what an agent on the net is. In chapter 3 on telematic culture, I briefly discussed bots, a type of a primitive agents first to emerge on the net. But, there is not just one and only accepted definition for an agent. One very general definition for an agent is given by Stuart Russel and Peter Norvig. They state that an agent is anything that can be viewed as perceiving its environment through sensors and acting upon the environment through effectors. (Russel & Norvig, 1995)

8.5.2 Autonomous agents originate mainly in artificial research. Object-oriented programming, human-computer interface design, control theory, cognitive psychology, and robotics have all contributed to the development of artificial developments. Thus by very definition it is a highly interdisciplinary field. Knapik and Johnson have gathered various definitions of agents in their book. One generic operational feature of agents, they state, is their autonomy. Autonomous agents can operate without immediate intervention of humans and can have some kind of control of their internal state. They bring up an important feature‹the social ability of agents.

8.5.3 Most earlier agent-oriented approaches have focused on a single agent with simple knowledge and problem solving or a single agent with a general knowledge that performs a wide range of user delegated tasks. A centralised approach requires huge amount of information and processing power. Such centralised approaches fail in software systems as they do in political and organisational systems. It would only follow that they would be the wrong approach for developing networked social spaces. [top]