the word "agent" seems a near-omnipresent umbrella term for the small parcels of information, contextual knowledge, fact-finding and evaluation skills that we have no better word for than 'intelligence'.
who chose to promulgate the word 'agent'? it has in our world such overwhelmingly negative connotations - estate agent, recruitment agent, literary agent - the deepest form of interpersonal scum. while the term pervades, the likelihood that i'd be welcoming a pandering salesman to my hard drive seems complete.
alternative and close second is the 'bot', *bot, short for robot. imagining ROBOT to be a recent acronym, i'm surprised by MIT's assertion that it is "a term derived from the Czech word robota, meaning 'forced labor'".
What is a software agent other than an intermediary between data sources and its owner? Just like a 'real' agent, it enters into complex relationships both with sources and other agents, but at the end of the day, it all boils down to being something that takes data and presents it to the user. - evil dave
discourse. ethical impls of 'master-slave' rel. w/ my computer. service time, sysadmin. agency. the servant of the server. a possibility of a peerish relation with a virtual entity.
a list: perp, scout, tug, entixi, bitler, factotum, thingy, javapalavatar, bailiff, seneschal, monkey, bitch.
bot is possibly an intellectually discredited term which is a shame. agent is too large a term, like "vehicle" or "automobile" in its scope.
auto, automated, autonomous, authoritative, authorial.
the actions of any representative of mine would be important to me in their reflection of my behaviour. but i would like my memes to propagate just like any other person. i would have vivacious researchers and a staid editor, a smart and helpful seneschal and i would at times forget any distinction between real and non-'real' entities. subjugate. there is an insidious undertext. the 'command line'.
not sure what i'd want when i sit down to write one. play with text-to-speech, hold readings of bad generative poetry inside my computer. the textual experience though is primal can i say it for me. news headlines and subheads for example are they better read out ever are they useful when non-interactive? a mod_perl web based prototype seems to call out, but we're meant to run locally. in the short term there seems nothing new. but one has to start somewhere.
i want mybitch to impersonate some aspect of myself. i want it to handle things for me when i am off the net. through an interface it will help me do many things i find breifly time-consuming and repeat often enough. we will learn each others quirks and preferences. it will have friends that i don't know about.
would the different aspects of functions, different programs, would they be different entities or parts of the same one?