Human Cognition and Social Agent Technology

Human Cognition and Social Agent Technology is written for readers who are curious about what human (social) cognition is, and whether and how advanced software programs or robots can become social agents. Topics addressed in 16 peer-reviewed chapters by researchers at the forefront of agent research include: Narrative intelligence and implementations of story-telling systems, socially situated avatars and ‘conscious’ software agents, cognitive architectures for socially intelligent agents, agents with emotions, design issues for interactive systems, artificial life agents, contributions to agent design from artistic practice, and a Cognitive Technology view on living with socially intelligent agents. The book addresses both software and robotic agents. On the one hand justice is done to the scientific and technical aspects, and on the other hand the reader will learn about pioneering technological developments which are necessary for a public discourse and critical evaluation on where social agent technology is leading us and how such a development can be shaped in order to meet the social, cultural and cognitive needs of humans.
The book is suitable for students, researchers, and everyone interested in this emerging and quickly growing field, it does not require any specialist background knowledge.
(Series B)

Alexis Drogoul, Université Paris 6, France, in Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation (JASSS), July 2003:
[...] this book is perhaps one of the most interesting I have read in the last five years. I would also like to mention that, while it is usually underestimated relative to the authors' contributions, the work done by the editor is really awesome. The biggest difficulty, in this case, is that the authors come from very different disciplines (AI, sociology, art and robotics) and yet there is a strong unity throughout the book. The organisation is clever and allows the reader (whether their background is in sociology or computer science) to progress quite easily.