January 1997
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This file is a list of items added to the UMBC agents pages this month
and is in maintained chronological order. Past months:
January 1997,
December 1996,
November 1996,
October 1996,
September 1996,
August 1996,
July 1996,
June 1996,
May 1996,
April 1996,
March 1996,
February 1996,
January 1996,
December 1995,
November 1995,
October 1995,
September 1995,
August 1995 and before.
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Summer school on information extraction
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Summer school on
information extraction (SCIE-97), University of Roma, Tor Vergata,
Villa Mondragone Frascati, Roma, Italy, 14-19 July 1997. "Aim of the
school is to bring together researchers and practicioners of the
different scientific areas involved in Information Extraction (Natural
Language Processing, Information Retrieval, Machine Learning,
Statistics, ...) to stress its multidisciplinary nature."
1/29/97
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Operating System support for Mobile Object Systems
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MOBILE OBJECT SYSTEMS:
Operating System support for Mobile Object Systems -- Jyvaskyla,
Finland, June 9-10, 1997. " The goal of this workshop is to explore
new directions in operating systems as well as the synergy with mobile
computations and object-oriented programming languages. Thus we will
identify needs of mobile programs and how these can be met by the
innovative operating system designs." Topics include: operating
systems for mobile computations; programming language support for
mobility; security mechanisms and policies for mobile computations;
portable intermediate representations; communication mechanisms; and
management of mobile object systems. Submission deadline is April 5,
1997. This workshop is held in conjunction with the 11th European Conference on
Object-Oriented Programming (June 9-13).
1 29/97
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Protocol for meta-search engines
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STARTS -- Stanford Protocol Proposal for Internet Search and
Retrieval -- is the result of an informal "standards" effort that
coordinated at Stanford by Luis Gravano, Kevin Chang, Hector
Garcia-Molina, Carl Lagoze, and Andreas Paepcke. The project developed
a simple protocol that text search engines should follow to facilitate
searching and indexing multiple collections of text documents.
1/29/97
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Mobile Agents 97
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The First International Workshop on Mobile
Agents 97 (MA'97) will be held in Berlin, Germany on April 7 - 8,
1997 in conjunction with ISADS 97 , the 3rd
International Symposium on Autonomous Decentralized Systems (April 9 -
11, 1997, Berlin, Germany).
1/29/97
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Coordination languages, models, systems
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A minitrack on Coordination
languages, models, systems in the Software Technology Track of the
Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-31) will focus on
abstract coordination paradigms, coordination language design,
coordination models and mechanisms for distributed programming, and
coordination applications and systems. Topics of interest include:
- Coordination problems within concurrent, distributed, object oriented,
functional and logic programming
- Architectural description languages, and coordination of software
architecture case studies
- Software architectures and middleware for the development of
coordination applications
- Semantics and reasoning about coordination
- Coordination mechanisms for WWW and multiagent systems
300-word abstracts are due March 17, 1997 with full papers due
June 2, 1997. 1/28/97
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NCSA digital library experients
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DIGITAL LIBRARIES: THE FUTURE. From Edupage 1-27-97. " The vision of
computers powerful enough to organize and index huge treasure troves
of scientific literature using intelligent functions such as
"vocabulary switching" -- classifying an article that mentions "Unix"
under "operating systems" even if the words "operating systems" do not
appear in the article -- is finally coming to fruition, 32 years after
it was first outlined in J.C.R. Licklider's "Libraries of the Future"
(1965). Large-scale simulations on the HP Convex Exemplar
supercomputer at the National Center for Supercomputer Applications
have resulted in generating concept spaces for 10 million journal
abstracts across 1,000 subject areas covering all engineering and
science disciplines -- the largest vocabulary switching computation
ever achieved in information science. Future developments will
require automatic indexing with scaleable semantics to coordinate
searches among the one billion repositories likely in the next
century. (Science 17 Jan 97 p327)" 1/28/97
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Intelligent Data Analysis
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Intelligent Data
Analysis is a new fully electronic, Web-based international
journal published by Elsevier Science Inc. Editor Fazel Famili states in the
initial issue:
Our goal is to publish a high quality WEB-based journal. The
submission process is all electronic. Each article will be reviewed by
at least two reviewers. Our intention is also to have 70% of articles
in applied research and 30% theoretical.
Our plan at this time is to publish four issues per year. The four
issues will be available in January, April, July, and October. Each
issue will consist of 4 to 5 articles. Depending on the number of high
quality articles accepted, this may change in the future--either by
increasing the number of articles per issue or the number of issues
per year. We may also decide to publish each article as soon as it is
ready and, for archival and reference purposes, organize articles into
quarterly issues. ...
The IDA journal will offer a number of new features that are not
currently available in paper journals: (i) an alerting service
notifying subscribers of new papers in the journal, (ii) links to
large-scale data collections, (iii) links to secondary collection of
data related to material presented in the journal, (iv) the ability to
test new search mechanisms on the collection of journal articles, (v)
links to related bibliographic material, and (vi) inclusion of 3-D
objects and multiple color graphs."
1/28/97
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VIRTUAL PET SWEEPING JAPAN
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Edupage, 1-23-97. "The newest high-tech consumer fad in
Japan is tamagochii, an electronic bird creature which
starts life as an endearing, bird-like image on the screen
of an egg-shaped key ring device, and then changes from a
chick to a fully grown adult in around 10 days. However,
the owner must push the right buttons to feed, groom and
soothe the digital creature or else see it waste away and
die from neglect. (Vancouver Province 23 Jan 97 A27)"
9/25/97
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Agelts workbench
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The fourth alpha release of IBM's Aglets Workbench
is now available. Aglets provide a framework for mobile
Java agents and are the basis for a proposed standard Agent Transfer
Protocol. There is also a new mailing list for agletss
--
aglets@javalounge.com . See
http://www.trl.ibm.co.jp/aglets/intouch.html for more
informion. |
Workshop on Open Agent Platforms and Protocols
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The Agent Society is sponsoring a 1 1/2 day design workshop
on
Open Intelligent Agent Platforms and Protocols using an
informal "IETF BOF" style. The workshop will be held on
February 9th and 10th (immediately after the Autonomous
Agents '97 conference) at the Marina Beach Marriot Hotel,
Marina del Rey CA USA. The purpose is to pull together
interested parties to produce a "Standards Roadmap for Open
Agent Platforms, Communication and Interoperability." There
is no charge for the workshop; but space is limited and
registration is requested. The Agent Society is a new
organization to facilitate cooperation, and information
exchange among the agent community and the public, and will
hold an organizational meeting the evening of 9 Feb.
1/25/97
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Metabot meta-search engine
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Metabot is a
java-based client server application that performs a
parallel search of popular web search engines and deletes
the duplicate entries, while leaving descriptions intact.
Metabot allows users to deploy crawler bots to examine each
page returned in the initial search. The 'bots' examine the
returned links for email addresses, images, ftp/http links,
audio files, shockwave files, and other web-based media and
dynamically build a web page with links to the files or
objects.
1/25/97
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CIA '97
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The First International Workshop on COOPERATIVE
INFORMATION AGENTS will be held on 26th (Wed) - 28th
(Fri) of February 1997 at the University of Kiel. The
advance program and additonal information is available at
http://www.informatik.uni-kiel.de/~mkl/cia97.html.
1/25/97
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Muti-agent Systems for Design
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A workshop on Multi-agent
Systems in Design will be held in conjuction with the 4th Conference
of Knowledge-based Systems (XPS97) March 5-7 1997 in
Bonn, Germany. The workshop is organized in two phases -- a
virtual workshop where the participants communicate over a
shared workspace and a physical workshop for the discussion
of the results of the virtual workshop. SOr more
information contact Oliver Hoffmann at oliver@efads2.tuwien.ac.at.
1/25/97
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Push channel filters
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Verity Inc. and Tierra Communications have developed products that
filter data channels "pushed" to Web users from content-delivery
companies. Verity's product will expand its search engine's agent
technology to allow users to fine-tune the information they receive by
creating a profile for what they want to receive off of a Web site's
channel. Tierra is developing a server-based model of its Highlights
browser utility, which monitors Web content and matches users'
profiles on a dynamic basis. "Verity and Tierra both have pieces of
the puzzle. Verity has filtering and back-end expertise, and Tierra
has a nice client with a channel-type metaphor that works great with
browsers," says a Forrester Research analyst. [Edupage] MORE from InfoWorld Electric 10 Jan 97.
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Agents'97 conference full
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The First International Conference on Autonomous Agents,
(Marina del Rey, California, February 5-8) 1997 is completely full and
registration has closed. registrations received after the January
10th advanced registration deadline are being processed in the order
received, until the conference is fully booked. Interested people who
are unable to attend the conference will have the option of purchasing
the conference materials. 1/19/97
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Workshop on
Mobile Intelligent Agent Standards
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The Agent Society ia planning a two-day
Workshop on Mobile Intelligent Agent Standards for early February 1997
to focus on needs, architectures, specifications and issues associated
with the use and interoperability of mobile intelligent agents across
all Internet and Intranet platforms. For further information send
email to info@agent.org or phone
its temporary Secretariat at +1 408.774.6950. 1/19/97.
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OMG Mobile Agent Facility
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The OMG has an RPF for a Data Interchange
Facility and Mobile Agent Facility RFP.
"The Data Interchange Facility is a facility supporting
interoperability between objects. The key elements of the service
include the data interchange interfaces, the data object type, the
life cycle of data objects, and the data translation interfaces. The
use of metadata is another important area. In order to implement
mobile agents, three key features need to be supported by ORB:
launching and loading of agents on what is traditionally thought of as
the client side of the ORB, time asynchrony, and ORB notifying senders
and receivers of arrival of packets intended for them. The mobile
agent facility proposes these changes."
GMD FOKUS, IBM and The Open Group have submitted a response ( OMG TC Document
cf/96-12-01, Draft 5). An evaluation entitled An
Assessment of the Mobile Agent Facility Proposal has been written
by by Cynthia Tham, Barry Friedman, Jim White and Tony Rutkowski all
of General Magic Inc. 1/19/97
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Shaking Hands
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Vishal Mehra and Daniel Dias of IBMÕs T.J. Watson Research
Center have released an alpha version of Shaking Hands -- a
new collaborative application architecture that supports
collaboration over the World Wide Web. Shaking Hands
provides a single method and location for real-time access
to both a collaborative application and its associated data.
All components of a Shaking Hands collaborative application
reside on the network. Users "join" a collaborative
application, gaining access to both the application and the
data from the same network-based Java server. Shaking Hands
comes with several collaborative applications including a
foil server, a white board, a chat server and a network
gaming server. 1/19/97
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Internet Dreams
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Internet Dreams: Archetypes, Myths, and Metaphors, Mark
Stefik, MIT Press, November 1996 350 pp., 24 illus. $27.50
ISBN 0-262-19373-6.
"The stakes are high: metaphors can have an impact on the
legal and policy aspects of the future of the Internet as
well as its technical design and economic structure.
Internet Dreams illuminates not only how the Net is being
created, but also stories about ourselves as our lives
become electronically interconnected. Ancient myths meet
modern networks. Carl Jung and others maintain that our
dreams speak to us in terms of archetypes and symbols.
These symbols are often universal. They reveal much about
our common humanity and how we see ourselves. These symbols
also appear in our patterns of speech, reflecting in our
choice of metaphor how we shape our understanding of things.
Mark Stefik explores some of the most provocative writings
about the Internet to tease out the deeper metaphors and
myths. He finds four persistent metaphors: digital library,
electronic mail, electronic marketplace, and digital world.
These metaphors are based on ancient myths and archetypes
that have influenced human thinking for thousands of years:
keeper of knowledge (the digital library), communicator
(electronic mail), the trader (electronic marketplace), and
the adventurer (digital world). Recast in the setting of
high technology they are still powerful guides, capable of
refreshing our sense of direction and purpose in creating
the Internet. Mark Stefik is Principal Scientist,
Information Sciences and Technology Laboratory, Xerox PARC.
1/11/97
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Workshop on Metadata registries
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The Joint
Workshop on Metadata Registries will be held on July 8-11, 1997 at
the University of California, Berkeley and will address improving
access to and sharing of data by harmonizing metadata standards and
developing interoperable metadata registries accessible by the World
Wide Web. Detailed recommendations will be developed for registries
of data element metadata and higher-level metadata (e.g., for schemas,
models, and metamodels). The workshop will bring together researchers
in formal methods (from the knowledge representation and database
communities), and other researchers and practitioners from the
database research, standards, metadata registry, middleware and
database vendor, GIS, EDI, and digital library communities. Submit
papers and abstracts by March 7, 1997.
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User Modeling Inc.
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Alfred Kobsa (Alfred.Kobsa@gmd.de
reports that User Modeling, Inc.
(UM Inc) has implemented several new services for the user modeling
community, including - comprehensive information about UM Inc's
International Conferences on User Modeling, including workshop results
and some electronic proceedings articles; - highly discounted
individual subscriptions to the journal "User Modeling and
User-Adapted Interaction"; - an email distribution list for
announcements of the organization; and - pointers to many other
international resources in the area of user modeling and adaptation to
the user. More information thereon can be found in UM Inc's new web
pages at http://www.um.org.
1/167/97
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Skull pins keep wigs in place
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Gregory Sorkin, IBM
T.J. Watson Research Center (Hawthorne), comments on the London Times
article mentioned in
AgentNews 1.18
"I am familiar with the London Times article to which
Mr. Rosbach refers, and which quotes me. (The Sunday Times, 1 Dec
1996, Innovations: Bits & Bytes, "Software hunts and kills Net
viruses". Curiously, the same section includes articles entitled
"Skull pins keep wigs in place" and "Cheeseburgers are rich in
cancer-fighting compounds, and can be seen at
http://www.sunday-times.co.uk/news/pages/
sti/96/12/01/stiinnbit01003.html?1483095.) The article is not an
accurate account of IBM AntiVirus. As far as I know I was not
interviewed for the article, even though I was quoted by name.
It is true that IBM AntiVirus contains a neural network which
detects new viruses by generalizing from old ones. It is also true
that we are building towards an "immune system for cyberspace", whose
functions will include an automated analysis of any new virus detected
on a machine, and transmission of the results --- notably a procedure
for removing the virus --- to affiliated machines. The prototype
software is undergoing extensive testing, and will not be released
until we are confident of its reliability.
We would of course never design a program to spread to any system
whose owner hadn't explicitly arranged for it to be there, nor do we
have any release scheduled for this week.
For those interested in the technical details, let me also mention
that temporal difference learning has nothing to do with the neural
network in IBM AntiVirus. Temporal difference learning was used for
the very powerful backgammon-playing neural network developed by Gerry
Tesauro, and Gerry also helped develop the anti-viral neural net, but
there is no other connection between the backgammon network and the
anti-viral one.
For more information about computer viruses in general and IBM
AntiVirus in particular, please see http://www.av.ibm.com/.
1/17/96
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Cooperative Information Systems
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Second IFCIS International Conference on
Cooperative
Information Systems, Kiawah Island (Charleston), South Carolina,
USA, June 24-27 1997. The Second IFCIS International Conference on
Cooperative Information Systems (CoopIS) is the premier event in
Cooperative Information Systems. It is sponsored by the International
Foundation on Cooperative Information Systems (IFCIS), and replaces
the erstwhile international workshops on Interoperability in
Multidatabase Systems (IMS) and the conference series on Cooperative
Information Systems (CoopIS & ICICIS). 1/16/96
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I seek you
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ICQ ("I seek you") is a
freeware Internet tool that alerts you in real time when somebody you
know goes online. Using a unique identification and search system, ICQ
monitors a list of contacts for active connections, thereby allowing
you to chat, send messages and files, and even establish network games
without the usual hit and miss routine. The program runs in the
background on a Windows 95/NT system. ICQ supports most popular Web
browsers and email clients, as well as a variety of external Internet
applications such as NetMeeting and VDOPhone. Features include the
ability to transfer files directly to another user, chat in both IRC
and split-screen styles, quickly and automatically exchange bookmarks,
"hide" from other users (allow only authorized people to know that
you're online), and provide World Wide Pager access to others.
1/16/97
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Office Assistants for MS Office 97
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FunArts Software is the creator
of "Office Assistants" for Microsoft Office '97. Robby Kilgore and
Maz Kessler have been involved in the development and production of
software agents since 1993. In early 1995 they became Creative
Directors of the newly formed Social User Interface group at
Microsoft. Recent work includes a suite of fully animated help agents
for Office '97. In addition to designing the behavioral architecture
for the underlying services, Maz & Kilgore produced and directed some
of America's foremost animators, including Academy Award winning Joan
Gratz, Danger Productions, and International Rocketship.
1/15/97
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IntelliSense in Microsoft Office 97
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IntelliSense for Microsoft Office 97 provides some agent-oriented
help facilities. "Every time Microsoft conducts customer research,
customers overwhelmingly indicate that they care most about the
software's ease of use. Through IntelliSense'a technology, Microsoft
Office software "understands" the context of an enduser's actions,
recognizes the user's intent, and automatically produces the correct
result. It helps to raise the bar on measures of ease of
use. IntelliSense features fall into three main categories: Automating
routine tasks; Simplifying complex tasks; and Personalizing the
software and enhancing discoverability. Microsoft first included
IntelliSense in Office 4.0 in 1993. As each new version of Microsoft
Office is developed, Microsoft looks for new ways to incorporate
IntelliSense into the products. This whitepaper explores how
IntelliSense in Office 97 makes it easier for users to get their work
done. 1/15/97
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Toon-zombies at the tiller?
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An Upgraded Leviathan Sets Sail , Stephen Manes, New Your Times
Cybertimes, January 14, 1997.
"Batten down the hard drive! Microsoft Office 97 will officially arrive
on Thursday with a bag of new features even bigger than the usual
upgrade. Many are useful and potentially important, like a cornucopia
of options involving hypertext and the Internet. But pesky cartoon
critters descended from the late and unlamented Microsoft Bob get in
the way.
...
Office 97 is a Leviathan of a program that in a "typical" installation
requires more than 120 megabytes of hard disk space. Offering to sell
your soul to the devil provided you could first finish examining
Office's every nook and cranny would lead to a long, long life. In a
space smaller than a single help page, it is all a hapless reviewer
can do to record a few general impressions.
The new Office Assistant feature offers something Office has never had
before: a help facility that makes reasonable guesses about what you
might be looking for in a particular situation. Unfortunately, that
help is presented solely in the form of dialogue balloons attached to
one of eight cartoon characters, most of which make irrelevant,
distracting movements and sounds until you turn them off.
But these toon-zombies are as insistent on popping up again as Wile
E. Coyote. If you want to use certain functions, like the sometimes
helpful natural-language search function introduced in Office 95, or
get certain special information, like expanded examples of grammatical
errors, you must turn on the cartoon channel. Unless customers insist
that Microsoft exorcise the ghost of the undead Bob, customized
cartoons (perhaps a jittery version of your company's logo) may one
day be your only route to help."
1/14/97
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AI in Digital Libraries
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IJCAI-97 Workshop on AI in Digital
Libraries, Nagoya Congress Center Nagoya, Japan, August 23, 1997.
Short papers (5-8 pages) are sought describing novel AI algorithms and
techniques applied to Digital libraries including software agents for
resource discovery, knowledge and metadata representation,
interoperability, cooperative information systems, and information
economies. Papers are also sought describing real world digital
libraries which employ embedded AI technology, or well supported and
imaginative visionary papers discussing future challenges and
directions are requested. Also of interest are review papers (5-8
pages), particularly those which address linkages between AI and other
pertinent fields of study such as the information and library
sciences. Submission deadline is February 14, 1997. 1/13/97
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Future of AI and the Internet
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IJCAI-97 Workshop on The Future of
AI and the Internet, August 24, Nagoya, Japan. The aim of this
workshop is to discuss the medium to long-term research agenda for
Artificial Intelligence on the Internet. Workshop participants will be
expected to take a position on the central question: "What aspect
of AI will play an important role on the Internet in the next 5-10
years, and why?" The workshop will take the shape of a debate on
the current state, future promise, and overall importance of different
research areas. Electronic submissions, not longer than 10 printed
pages for full papers, or 3 pages for short position papers, are due
by February 19, 1997. 1/12/96
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Bionic Cockroaches
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Bionic Cockroaches Might Make Good Bugs. Wired News BRIEF 8:00 pm PST 9
Jan 97. A team of Japanese scientists has been awarded US$5 million
to continue research into bionic cockroaches. The bio-robot research
team at Tokyo University has been breeding American cockroaches, then
surgically implanting them with tiny "backpacks" that weigh one-tenth
of an ounce and contain microprocessors and electrodes. Signals sent
to the electrodes jolt the hardy bugs and make them turn left or
right, or run forward or backward. Researchers hope the bionic bugs
will be well suited to crawling into earthquake rubble to find
victims, or into tight spaces to aid in espionage and surveillance
operations. 1/9/97
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Adaptive hypertext
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ADAPTIVEHH@UTS.EDU.AU is a mailing list for discussions about
issues relating to the principles, design and development of adaptive
computer-based learning environments based on hypertext or
hypermedia. Encompassing student modelling, knowledge representation,
teaching architectures, adaptive methods and techniques, learning
theory, and working systems. It's available as an immediate message
list and in digest form. Subscribe by sending a message with the word
"subscribe" in the body to either
ADAPTIVEHH-REQUEST@UTS.EDU.AU or
ADAPTIVEHH-DIGEST-REQUEST@UTS.EDU.AU Only subscribers are allowed
to mail messages to the list. 1/8/97
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Personalized news services
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Gert Braakman (nature@worldaccess.nl) has compiled an
extensive list of
personalized news services which he posted to the dreamwave@cybercom.net
mailing list on 19 Dec 1996. The notes document personalized
news services (e.g., My Yahoo!, Infoseek "My News", etc.), personalized
news services using information push technology (e.g., Pointcast,
BackWeb, etc.), services using publish and subscribe technology
(Intermind), traditional newspapers offering personalized news (e.g.,
WSJ, LAT SJMN, etc.), clipping services (e.g., Clickshare), surf
assistants or net agents (e.g., Netangel, More like this, etc.), and
Internet robots and agents (e.g., Autonomy Agentware, Webtamer,
Netattache Pro, etc.).
1/7/97
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Agents'97
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Business
Wire article on AGENTS-97, DEC 18,1996. "The First International
Conference on Autonomous Agents -- Agents '97. Business Editors &
Computer Writers. LOS ANGELES--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec. 18,
1996--Computer experts from around the world will gather in Los
Angeles in early February to hear about autonomous agents -- one of
the most important software breakthroughs of the 1990s....
1/7/97
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Socially Intelligent Agents
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1/7/97
A AAAI Symposium on Socially
Intelligent Agents will be held the Royal Sonesta Hotel in Cambridge,
Massachusetts, November 7-9, 1997. This symposium aims to focus on the
issue of social expertise which has been discussed so far in different
research areas like psychology, sociology, biology, artificial intelligence
and robotics. In particular, we wish to address the origins and development
of social expertise with respect to the concrete realization of an
artificial system. This includes both the external behavior and the
internal cognitive and motivational abilities of an agent. The concepts
discussed should include both software and hardware agents, in both natural
and synthetic environments. The discussions focus on cross-technological
concepts (excluding those restricted to a specific hardware or software
technology). 1/1/97
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The Weekly Pheromone
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1/7/97
The Weekly Pheromone is a weekly email newsletter of the Swarm project
at the Santa Fe Institute. It stands to inform users of the
activities and goals of the hive and user community. Contributions
are accepted that announce Swarm-related events or activities in any
of the growing Swarm colonies around the world. Inquiries,
subscription requests and contributions should be sent to swarm@santafe.edu.
1/7/97
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Intelligent Agents at IBM TJ Watson
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Intelligent
Agents Project at IBM T.J. Watson Research: -- Embeddable
Intelligent Agents for Networked Applications, including Internet.
"Our mission is to develop intelligent agent technology that is highly
reusable and easy to integrate with a broad spectrum of networked
applications. Towards this end, we prototype applications in tandem
with developing reusable componentry. We also contribute to
company-wide efforts in strategy and in common architecture, e.g., for
inter-agent knowledge-level communication and inter-operability. For
more information about company-wide efforts, see the main IBM
intelligent agents page, as well as
our white papers and publications." 1/7/97
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Affective computing
|
Laugh
and Your Computer Will Laugh With You, Someday, DANIEL GOLEMAN,
NYT CyberNews, January 7, 1996.
"The phrase "user friendly" is about to take on a more literal meaning:
Computer scientists are creating machines that can recognize their
users' most intimate moods and respond like an empathetic friend. ...
Bits and pieces of this emotionally attuned cyber-future already
exist. Computer scientists at the Georgia Institute of Technology in
Atlanta have developed a computer system that can recognize simple
facial expressions of emotions like surprise and sadness. At
Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., and at Carnegie-Mellon
University in Pittsburgh, engineers have designed programs that
converse with people and respond appropriately to their emotions. And
at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in Cambridge, where much
of the work in what is being called "affective computing" is under
way, a computer worn around the waist monitors its wearer's every
shift of mood. No one claims that these more sensitive machines will
come close to replicating full human emotion. And some skeptics
question whether the work to mimic emotion in machines is worth the
effort. ..." 1/7/97
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