Customer Reviews

Software Agents

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This a really excellent collection of papers. Really well organized and includes writings from influential researchers in the field. It is the right book to start reading about agents, well fitted to serve as a basic reference

This book is a collection of papers that survey the concept of intelligent software agents a.k.a "software robots." It is very accessible yet has the flavor of academic rigor in terms of citations etc. As of 2005, this material is decidedly dated; a whole era of dot-com boom and bust has happened in the interim. Most of the digerati academicians that have advocated, if not hyped, these technologies now have more modest consulting and academic lives now. Perhaps it is for the better for eventual real progress. Anybody seriously interested in this field must read this book to get grounded. A newer state-of-the-art survey book of its caliber is an unmet need at the moment. Would have been a 5 star review in 1999 but time corrodes.

This book is a good collection of papers on software agents. I personally like the view of agents assumed in the book by Genesereth and the Introductory chapter.