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Resource Base.
This resource base is in the early days of construction. While it will grow significantly, it is not our goal to be comprehensive. This is done elsewhere, in the private sector and in academia. Our focus is on conceptual and social issues. If you are a member of the Persona Project and have references you would like to contribute, please send them to us.
Areas (to be) covered include:
-
Our own research paper(s)
What is an Agent?
Digital Persona
Agents and Privacy / Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PETs)
Convenience vs. Control
Our own research paper(s)
-
Felix Stalder: Intelligent Agents: some conceptual issues [February 2000]
Felix Stalder: Software Agents: Privacy Invasion Vs. Privacy Protection [April 2000]
Bullet point overview sheet [April 2000]
What is an Agent?
- Feldman, S & Yu, E.: Intelligent Agents: A Primer. Searcher, Vol 7, No. 9 October, 1999
- Foner, Leonard. "What's an Agent?"
- Weiss, Micheal A gentle introduction to agents and their applications
n.d.
- A Perspective On Agent Research, 1999
- Pattie Maes: Agents that Reduce Work and Information Overload. Communications of the ACM, 1994
Pattie Maes: Software Agents. A Tutorial, 1997
All software agents are programs, but not all programs are agents. Beyoubd that, no consensus has emerged on what exactely an agents it. A very basic list of characteristic to differentiate between a normal program (e.g. a word processor) and an agent includes:
| Program | Agent |
| Static. | Dynamic. |
| Direct manipulation: user initiates every action. | Indirect manipulation: autonomous. |
| Non-interactive. Dialogs are fully scripted. | Actions may be initiated by either the user or the agent system.
Interacts with user and with other agents. |
| Never changes, unless changed by a human or an error in the program. | Adapts, learns. |
| Runs one time, and then stops to be run again when called. | Persistent. Continues to run over time. |
| Predictable: does what you tell it to, even if you didn't mean what you said. | Interprets what you mean, not what you say. In the best of circumstances, actions are based on rules, but they may change over time, or in reaction to different circumstances. |
| Follows instructions. | May initiate actions, as well as respond to instructions. |
| Stays in one place. | May be mobile, traveling to other servers. |
Digital Persona
- R. Clarke: Digital Persona (1994)
- Kelin, Sabra-Anne: Digital Persona: A Gateway to Personal Information, Master Thesis, M.Eng MIT, 1999
Agents and Privacy / Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PETs)
- Intelligent Software Agents: Turning a Privacy Threat into a Privacy Protector
A joint project of the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner/Ontario and the Registratierkamer, The Netherlands.
- Platform for Privacy Preferences (P3P)
- Roger Clarke: 'Platform for Privacy Preferences: An Overview' (April 1998), Privacy Law & Policy Reporter 5, 2 (July 1998) 35-39
- Roger Clarke: 'Platform for Privacy Preferences: A Critique' (April 1998), Privacy Law & Policy Reporter 5, 3 (August 1998) 46-48
- Roger Clarke: 'Privacy-Enhancing and Privacy-Sympathetic Technologies - Resources', April 1999
- Roger Clarke: 'Anonymous, Pseudonymous and Identified Transactions: The Spectrum of Choice', Proc. IFIP User Identification & Privacy Protection
Conference, Stockholm, June 1999
- Helmers, S., Hoffmann, U. and Stamos-Kaschke, J., '(How) can software agents become good Net citizens?' Computer-Mediated Communication Magazine, Feb, 1997
Convenience vs. Control
- Maes, Pattie: Intelligent Software. Programs that can act independently will ease the burdens that computers put on people. Scientific American, 1995
- Lanier, Jaron: Agents of Alienation. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 2, 1995, pp. 76Ç81
- Lanier, Jaron: My Problem with Agents. Wired Magazine, 4.11 Nov. 1996
- Wired magazine's a web-based debate between Pattie Maes and Jaron Lanier on Intelligent Agents = Stupid Humans? June, 1996
- Rheingold, Howard: Comments on Intelligent Agents, 1998
- Stalder, Felix Digital Identity, 1998