The name is absent

From the computer science perspective, a software agent is a component: an object
(Booch, 1994) which might communicate with other components.

Since the tendency in software systems is to develop them in a distributed way, agent
theories are having a great influence on computer science. For example, with agent-oriented
programming (Shoham, 1993) and agent-based software engineering (Wooldridge, 1997;
Jennings, 2000). Because of the properties of agents, and also because of the needs of the
market, the software industry is already moving from the object paradigm to the agent
paradigm.

The SWARM Simulation Environment, developed at the Santa Fe Institute, is a
wonderful agent-oriented approach for building simulations, which extends software agent
theory itself. It would be not surprising that the SWARM ideology would be used in the near
future for every kind of software development, although it was designed with simulation
purposes, including artificial intelligence and artificial life.

It is clear that, since autonomous agents have to take decisions, BBS are linked to
systems using software agents. Advances in BBS will influence software agents, and vice versa.

1.3.3. Artificial life

“Ninety percent of life is just being there”

—Woody Allen

Artificial life (Alife) simulates life, in a similar way that AI simulates intelligence. Alife
is a synthetic representation of life. Since we perceive intelligence in many living organisms, AI
and Alife are closely linked, and sometimes overlapped.

Since BBS are inspired in animal behaviour, we could say that all BBS are included in
Alife.

Perhaps we could roughly distinguish the research done in Alife and in BBS. Alife has
studied more social behaviour (e.g. Reynolds, 1987) and evolution (e.g. Sims, 1994), while BBS
have studied more adaptive behaviour. Of course they have overlapped.

1.3.4. Philosophy

“How can we ask ourselves how can we ask ourselves?”

BBS have lead researchers and philosophers to propose theories of “how the mind
works”.

One example of this is Marvin Minsky’s Society of Mind. He sees the mind as a society
of non intelligent agents, from which intelligence emerges (Minsky, 1985).

Another example is the theory proposed by Andy Clark. By studying BBS (which have
studied ethology), he has seen that the mind is not isolated from the body nor from the world.
That our mind is distributed in our brains, bodies, and worlds (Clark, 1997).

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