The best way to get a good idea is to get a lot of ideas. -- Linus Pauling

Latest News Items

Robots to replace middle managers by 2051 -- This prediction comes from the winning entry in the "50 years of business computing" run by the UK National Computing Centre. (10/17)

A Smarter Web -- A Smarter Web, Mark Frauenfelder, Technology Review, November 2001 "The Web is huge but not very smart. Computer scientists are beginning to build a "Semantic Web" that understands the meanings that underlie the tangle of information. ..." (10/17)

Japanese Firm Lets Robot Cat Out of the Bag -- Japan's biggest toymaker pioneered the world's first virtual pet, the Tamagotchi, and the nation's most famous electronics maker rolled out the No. 1 robot dog, Aibo. Now one of its biggest makers of automated factory systems, Omron Corp., has weighed in with a robot cat: NeCoRo. Now one of its biggest makers of automated factory systems, Omron Corp., has weighed in with a robot cat: NeCoRo. (10/16)

Using Humans as a Computer Model -- A NYT article on IBM's vision for Autonomic Computing , building "computer systems that regulate themselves much in the same way our autonomic nervous system regulates and protects our bodies. " (10/16)

PCs talk personal -- An article from Nature on the qualities of synthesized voices that people prefer. (10/13)

Think Fast, Clever Robot -- The 2001 Loebner contest, a scaled down version of the Turing test, will be held Saturday, 13 October 2001, at the London Science Museum and will include entries from seven finalists. (10/13)

Latest Directory Additions

eXtreme Programming: The Semantic Web -- CMSC 498X is a course on the semantic web offered by Jim Hendler at the University of Maryland College Park during the Fall of 2001. (10/17)

Semantic Web Disseration -- Heflin, J. Towards the Semantic Web: Knowledge Representation in a Dynamic, Distributed Environment. Ph.D. Thesis, University of Maryland, College Park. 2001. (10/17)

Semantic Web (Lehigh) -- A course on the Semantic Web offered at Lehigh University by Jeff Heflin. (10/17)

IHT: 'Chatterbots' Fail to Fool the Judges -- This article from the Herald Tribune describes the results of the 2001 Loebner Contest held in London on 13 October. The $100K prize remains unwon and ALICE ( http://www.alicebot.org/) was again judged to be best of show. (10/17)

ActiveBuddy -- chat bots for IM -- ActiveBuddy, Inc. builds "Interactive Agents" for instant messaging systems. Users add their agents to their IM buddy lists and can hold conversations with them to get information. The agents can acquire a simple user model which is associated with the user's IM name. AN SDK to allow third parties to develop their own IM agents is promised for "later in 2001". (10/16)

Autonomic Computing -- IBM has a research effort to develop Autonomic Computing, aimed at building "computer systems that regulate themselves much in the same way our autonomic nervous system regulates and protects our bodies. " A white paper describing the vision and IBM's roadmap to achieving it is available. (10/16)

Doctor Satan's Robot -- This is a 100 minute compilation drawn from the fifteen part serial made in 1940. "The fiendish criminal mastermind Dr. Satan, (Eduardo Ciannelli), has created a robot army to enable him to conquer the world, but the mysteriously masked "Copperhead", ( Robert Wilcox), is prepared to save the planet. A rousing serial containing all the cliffhanging moments expected of it, but unfortunately only one robot." (10/14)

Fast, Cheap & Out of Control -- This 1997 documentary film directed by the accomplished Errol Morris features a segment on Rod Brooks and his approach to building robots, from which the title is derived. (10/14)

Out of Control : The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems and the Economic World -- "Out of Control : The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems and the Economic World" by Kevin Kelly (1995) is "an accessible and entertaining explanation of why the coming years will probably be the Age of Biology -- particularly evolution and ethology -- and what this will mean to most every aspect of our society. " (10/14)

OGI's agent based systems -- The Oregon Graduate Institutes's agent-based research project is working on both the theory and software for teams of communicating agents. (10/14)

Baboons Can Think Abstractly -- More non-human animals may be capable of abstract thought than previously known, with profound implications for the evolution of human intelligence and the stuff that separates homo sapiens from other animals. A trans-Atlantic team of psychologists has found evidence of abstract thought in baboons, significant because baboons are "old world monkeys," part of a different primate "super family" that -- some 30 million years ago -- split from the family that gave rise to apes and then humans. (from nibbs (10/13)

Oxford Guide to the Mind -- Oxford Guide to the Mind, Geoffrey Underwood (editor) (Oxford University Press; 2001,ISBN:0198600836) is a selection of some of the most central articles from the massive The Oxford Companion to the Mind covering the issues of: the software of the mind; the hardware of the mind; brain, mind and consciousness; when minds are damaged; disturbed minds; and minds in action. (review) (from nibbs (10/13)

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