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Volume 1, Number 6 Baltimore, May 11, 1996
http://www.cs.umbc.edu/agentnews/96/06/
"What information consumes is rather obvious:
it consumes the attention of its recipients.
Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty
of attention, and a need to allocate that attention
efficiently among the overabundance of
information sources that might consume it."
 -- Herbert Simon

-- AGENT TECHNOLOGY --

Oracle Web Agent

Oracle Web Agent is a generic procedural gateway, which seamlessly invokes Oracle stored procedures, and provides an object-oriented, user-extendible framework for producing dynamic HTML pages using Oracle's PL/SQL scripting language. The Oracle Web Agent is implemented using CGI, enabling it to function with any Web Server.

TACOMA v1.2 released

TACOMA v1.2 is a new version (re-)implemented in C and said to be much more stable than previous versions. It has been installed on HP-UX, Free BSD, Linux, SunOS, and Solaris. It supports agents written in C, Tcl/Tk, Perl, Python, and Scheme (Elk). There are also some Perl scripts supporting TACOMA in a web environment. A TACOMA agent can now be shipped from a web client (without any TACOMA support) to a remote TACOMA server for processing.

Autonomous Agent Programming using Java

The Applied Internet Technologies branch of SAIC has developed a framework to develop autonomous agents in Java. Currently on the Java-generated documentation is available. The framework does appear to support KQML communication with other agents.

Java-To-Go -- Itinerative Computing Using Java

Java-To-Go is an experimental infrastructure developed by William Li (wli@eecs.berkeley.edu) that assists in the development and experimentation of mobile agents and agent-based applications for itinerative computing. Li's take on itinerative computing is "the set of applications that requires site-to-site computations. Sites are usually traversed in sequence by a single mobile agent or in parallel by a group of agents." The Java-To-Go infrastructure is similar to that used in Telescript and other frameworks. It is based on two components and their interfaces: the mobile agents (Java programs) that actually move to remote sites and performs all the interactions, and the stationary Hall servers that provide the necessary computing resources for the agent to perform their duties.

CyberAgent Software Development Kit

Ftp Software has released the CyberAgent Software Development Kit which provides numerous agent classes designed to expedite the development of Java-based mobile agents. The CyberAgent classes include templates to create an intelligent agent, start an agent, stop an agent, define a travel plan, allow access to OLE-enabled applications, and support secure agent communications. You can also use the agent classes with various third-party Java integrated development environments (IDEs).

-- AGENT ONTOLOGIES AND PROTOCOLS --

PIF -- Process Interchange Format

PIF -- Process Interchange Format -- is a common translation language that serves as a bridge among heterogeneous process representations and supports the exchange of business process models across different formats and schemas.

A standard for communication with user modeling systems

A Standard for the Performatives in the Communication between Applications and User Modeling Systems is a draft Internet Request for Comments defining the communication between end-user applications and user modeling systems on the level of communicative primitives called "performatives". These are essentially the same as those in KQML, and are grouped into four levels based on their presumed relevance for user modeling purposes. This draft is the outcome of two standardization workshops at UM94 and UM96.

-- NEW AGENTS ON THE NET --

ShopBot -- shops for CDs and more

The University of Washington's Softbots group has ShopBot -- an experimental prototype WWW shopping agent under development. It tries to shop for computer software or CD's. Fill in the name and manufacturer of the software product you're looking for, or the title and artist of the pop/rock CD, and let the ShopBot go to work.

-- AGENT PROJECTS AND GROUPS --

SRI's Open Agent Architecture project

SRI's The Open Agent Architecture project is developing an architecture and accompanying user interface for networked desktop and hand held machines. The system support distributed execution of a user's requests, interoperability of multiple application subsystems, addition of new agents, are served by a multi-modal interface, including pen, voice, and direct manipulation.

The ModelAge program

ModelAge is an ESPRIT Basic Research Working Group focused on establishing a common formal model of the concept of agent. ModelAge is divided into specialist groups: SG1: Defeasibility of agent facets, SG2: Logics and models of action,SG3: Norm-governed interaction in organizations, SG4: Software Development Process, and SG5: Diagnosis, Repair and Industrial Control.

-- AGENT RESOURCES ON THE WEB --

Intelligent Software Agents web survey

Sverker Janson's web survey on Intelligent Software Agents is subdivided into a number of categories: information integration agents, coordinated agents, mobile agents, assistant agents, believable agents, other resources, recommended reading, and related topics.

Distributed-ai mailing list

Distributed-ai is a non-moderated mailing list for research on distributed artificial intelligence. It is administered by Lyndon Lee lyndon@essex.ac.uk . To subscribe the list, send email to mailbase@mailbase.ac.uk with the text "join distributed-ai FirstName LastName". To contribute to the list, send contribution to distributed-ai@mailbase.ac.uk.

-- AGENT PAPERS --

Foundations of Distributed Artificial Intelligence

Foundations of Distributed Artificial Intelligence, Edited by: Greg O'Hare & Nick Jennings, John Wiley and Sons, 1-00675-0, 1996, 576 pp, Price $79.95/45pounds. "This is the first book to provide a comprehensive treatment of distributed artificial intelligence, a field that has seen an explosion in recent years. The tremendous and growing interest in this field has underscored the need for an up-to-date, integrated reference accessible to both researchers and graduate students."

The Importance of us: A Philosophical Study of Basic Social Notions

Raimo Tuomela, THE IMPORTANCE OF US: A Philosophical Study of Basic Social Notions. Stanford Series in Philosophy, Stanford University Press, Stanford, Calif., 94305, U.S.A., 1995, 470 pp., ISBN 0-8047-2422-9, price USD 55.00. (tuomela@cc.helsinki.fi, University of Helsinki). The book develops a detailed systematic philosophical theory of social action and group phenomena, including analyses of central social notions such as "we-attitudes" (especially "we-intention"), social norm, joint action, and, most importantly, group goal, group belief as well as group action. CONTENTS: Introduction; 1. Norms, Tasks, and We-Attitudes; 2. Intentional Joint Action; 3. We-Intentions and Their Cognates; 4. Social Groups: A Conative Approach; 5. Group Actions; 6. Joint Goals and Group Goals; 7. Group Beliefs; 8. Social Roles; 9. The Existence of Social Entities; 10. Towards a General Dynamic Theory of Society.

Distributed Active Objects based on Obliq

Distributed Active Objects, Marc H. Brown and Marc A. Najork, DEC SRC Report #141a, April 15, 1996, 21 pages. Abstract: Many Web browsers now offer some form of active objects, written in a variety of languages, and the number of types of active objects are growing daily in interesting and innovative ways. This report describes our work on Oblets, active objects that are distributed over multiple machines. Oblets are written in Obliq, an object-oriented scripting language for distributed computation. The high-level support provided by Oblets makes it easy to write collaborative and distributed applications.

Toward the Virtual Marketplace - Architectures and Strategies

Maksim Tsvetovatyy and Maria Gini, "Toward the Virtual Marketplace - Architectures and Strategies", PAAM96, London, 1996 Abstract: In recent years, many researchers as well as commercial companies have attempted to create intelligent agent-based markets or retail outlets. Unfortunately, most of these systems have fallen short of changing the way commerce is done over the Internet. We think that some of the reasons of this shortfall are an incomplete implementation of the market metaphor and lack of automated purchasing and agent cooperation algorithms. In this research, we attempt to address these problems by designing an open marketplace architecture that includes all elements required for simulating a real market (i.e., communications, goods storage and transfer, banking, administration and policing, etc.). We also address the issues of automated purchasing and agent cooperation by devising strategies and algorithms for them. We also report findings that resulted from implementing and conducting experiments with a free-market agent architecture (MAGMA). MAGMA is an extensible architecture that provides all services essential to agent-based commercial activities. These services are available through an open-standard messaging API, which allows use of a heterogeneous set of agents, independently of platform and language.

Software Agents: An Overview

Software Agents: An Overview Hyacinth S. Nwana, BT Labs, to appear in Knowledge Engineering Review.

New Fungus Eater Experiments

New Fungus Eater Experiments, Thomas Wehrle, Universite de Geneve, Switzerland. Adapted from: Wehrle, T. (1994). New fungus eater experiments. In P. Gaussier, & J.-D. Nicoud (Eds.), From perception to action (pp. 400-403). Los Alamitos: IEEE Computer Society Press. ABSTRACT: though there seems to be a high agreement among researchers that the concept of autonomous agents should also be applied in Psychology, especially in Emotion Psychology, most work did not exceed the theoretical level yet. One reason obviously is the lack of adequate tools for applying and exploring this concept. This paper describes, on the bases of an implemented software package, what such a tool could look like. This simulation package has already been used for several applications. As an example we discuss an application that implements the basic concepts of the Emotional (or social) Fungus Eater of Masanao Toda.

Simulated Social Control for Secure Internet Commerce

Simulated Social Control for Secure Internet Commerce, by Lars Rasmusson and Sverker Janson, April 1996. Abstract: In this paper we suggest that soft security such as social control has to be used to create secure open systems. Social control means that it is the participants themselves who are responsible for the security, as opposed to leaving the security to some external or global authority. Social mechanisms don't deny the existence of malicious participants. Instead they are aiming at avoiding interaction with them. This makes them more robust than hard security mechanisms such as passwords, who reveal everything if they are bypassed. We describe our work in progress of constructing a workbench to run simulations of electronic markets. By examining the success of different security mechanisms to avoid maliciously behaving actors we hope to gain insight into how to create electronic markets. The idea of creating reputations for the participants is discussed. Finally some legal aspects on using social control and reputation as security mechanisms are discussed.

Personal Security Assistance for Secure Internet Commerce

Personal Security Assistance for Secure Internet Commerce, Andreas Rasmusson and Sverker Janson, April, 1996. Abstract: In this paper we discuss the approach of using a personal security assistant for interacting with mobile agents visiting your computer. We argue that instead of trusting an external authority to guarantee that the agent is correct/benign or that your local resources have all been assigned correct access-restrictions, a more rewarding security policy is to grant the visiting agent access to resources on the assumption that it will do useful work for you and behave as expected. Not disqualifying agents from doing useful work for you on the grounds that you have no previous experience from them facilitates the introduction of new agents into the market, since trusting the sender is less crucial. The paper contains a discussion on the security approach taken in most of today's agent systems and how security is enforced by Intrusion Detection Systems. We give a rationale for using an interactive Personal Security Assistant as an aid for detecting malicious agents visiting end-user agent environments and sketch the architecture and design criteria of such an assistant. We discuss how malicious programs could be identified and mention some preliminary experiments with Java-applets.

Autonomous Agents and the Concept of Concepts

Autonomous Agents and the Concept of Concepts, Paul Davidsson. This thesis has two main themes, autonomous agents (a system capable of interacting with its environment via its own sensors and effectors in order to accomplish some task) and the representation and the acquisition of concepts.

-- AGENT CONFERENCES AND WORKSHOPS --

Practical Applications of Information Filtering

Workshop on Practical Applications of Information Filtering to be held in conjunction with First International Conference on Practical Aspects of Knowledge Management (PAKM), Basel, Switzerland, October 30-31, 1996.

The Language/Action Perspective -- Int. Workshop on Communication Modeling

The Language/Action Perspective -- Int. Workshop on Communication Modeling, Tilburg, The Netherlands, JULY 1-2 1996, Sponsored by EIT Tilburg. This two-day workshop aims at bringing together researchers from Business Administration, Linguistics and Computer Science, as well as potential industrial partners and users, who are interested in the theory of Communicative Action and the modeling of Business Processes. The Language/Action perspective (based on Searle's Speech Act theory), introduced in the field of information systems by Flores and Ludlow in the early 1980's, has proven to be a new basic paradigm for Information Systems Design. In contrast to traditional views of "data flow", the language/action perspective emphasizes what people DO while communicating; how they create a common reality by means of language and how communication brings about a coordination of their activities.

Agent-Oriented Approaches to Knowledge Engineering

Agent-Oriented Approaches to Knowledge Engineering, Track in Knowledge Acquisition Workshop, KAW'96, Banff, Canada November 10-14, 1996. Paper deadline: May 31, 1996.

Opening Forum on Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agent

Opening Forum on Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agents (FIPA), IBM T. J. Watson Research Center, Yorktown, NY, USA - 24-26 June 1996. The Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agents (FIPA) is an international organization with the goal of promoting the industry of Intelligent Physical Agents (IPA). IPAs are devices intended for the mass market, capable of executing actions to accomplish goals imparted by or in collaboration with human beings or other IPAs, with a high degree of intelligence. The group agreed on the need and timeliness of FIPA. The purpose of this FIPA Opening Forum is to: refine the list of basic agent capabilities candidate for FIPA specification; compile a first list of agent capabilities intended for specification by end 1997; and establish the first working groups.

Conference on Agile and Intelligent Manufacturing Systems

Conference on Agile and Intelligent Manufacturing Systems, October 2-3, 1996, Troy, NY. "... a two-day conference focusing on the design, manufacturing, planning, control and distribution aspects of agile and intelligent manufacturing systems." Papers on agile and intelligent manufacturing are sought on these topics: Supply chain integration and management; Design and manufacturing information integration; Design and planning integration for product realization; Planning and control systems; and Information infrastructure. Send letter of intent to participate and extended abstract by June 7. Notification of acceptance will be sent on June 14 and full papers are due August 9th.

-- RANDOM AGENT NEWS ITEMS --

Intelligent Agent or Vector Match?

As one of his last acts before announcing his move to Lucent, Apple Computer VP Donald Norman talked about "agent" technology being already in widespread use on the Net: "If you describe it as this wonderful thing to which you tell your preferences and it goes off and gives you a suggestion, now that's an agent. But if I simply say, It's just a vector match, it computes the vector on your preferences and puts it into the multi-dimensional vector space of all preferences of all people and finds the ones that are closest -- that sounds mechanistic, right? So where's the agent? And it turns out both phrases are describing the same thing." (Internet World May 96 p60) (from Edupage, 14 April 1996)

AT&T May Drop PersonaLink

The growing use of the Internet backbone by companies and individuals may have doomed AT&T's PersonaLink communications network according to a 10K form filed with the SEC by AT&T's partner in the deal, General Magic. The disclosure was mandated by law because, if AT&T does scrap the deal it would be a significant blow to General Magic. The PersonaLink network was to be the only commercial online service to use "intelligent agents" developed as part of General Magic's proprietary Telescript software. The intelligent agents would be used by PersonaLink subscribers to collect information and monitor the Net for specified materials and deliver them to the subscriber. MORE.

But, Tom Hershenson, Marketing Communications Liaison of General Magic, points out that other companies have indeed licenced Telescript technology for commercial use.

-- AGENTNEWS NEWS --

New categories on UMBC AgentPages

We've added new sections to the UMBC AgentPages for introductory material , FAQs , employment opportunities , and agents and artificial life .

The FBI agent pizza call

This account of the FBI agent pizza call has nothing to do with software agents. It does mention the word agent, however, and struck us as funny. (It's hard to find good jokes about intelligent software agents. A year's careful monitoring of Letterman's show, for example, has turned up nothing). We don't believe this FBI story really happened, btw.

Three ways to get AgentNews by email

Each issue of AgentNews exists as a web page but you can get it via email in one of three forms -- ASCII, html or url. The default is to receive each copy as ASCII text (i.e., not marked up with HTML) with the URLs for the major links represented textually. The URL to the original source will always be listed just after the date at the top of each AgentNews issue so if you read your mail with a web-aware mail reader, you can click on this link to view the HTML version. If you prefer, you can get each issue as the full HTML source or as just a URL pointing to the source. Choose which version you want by subscribing to one of the lists agentnews, agentnews-html, or agentnews-url. See the agentnews web page for details. [an error occurred while processing this directive]