talk with r.w. lawler and oliver g. selfridge.

" ...von Foerster said it very well, "The hard sciences appear hard because they tackle soft problems. The soft sciences face the harder problems."

another educational paper: "why today's computer don't learn the way people do" by william j. clancey what do you learn when you learn that you learn that's how the title of the symposium sounded to me when i was reading it first. but, claro, you should read here: what can we learn about learning by teaching machines to learn. almost a match, just a slide difference.

regarding to nytimes brian kernighan is now teaching over there.

nice paper on software agents from jeffrey m. bradshaw

“The idea of an agent originated with John McCarthy in the mid-1950’s, and the term was coined by Oliver G. Selfridge a few years later, when they were both at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. They had in view a system that, when given a goal, could carry out the details of the appropriate computer operations and could ask for and receive advice, offered in human terms, when it was stuck. An agent would be a ‘soft robot’ living and doing its business within the computer’s world.” (Kay 1984)

talking also about that "explosion in the use of the term without a corresponding con-sensus on what it means", describing early approaches and what drives the development

"The emphasis has subtly shifted from deliberation to doing; from reasoning to remote action."

and what remains to be confusing:

"one person’s “intelligent agent” is another person’s “smart object”; and today’s “smart object” is tomorrow’s “dumb program.”

The June 2002 formation of the Open Mobile Alliance (OMA could be the most important political and organizational development of 2002 for future mobile devices - or it could be a quagmire for the wireless industry." say the people from the shosteck group. in there point of view the winners and the loosers will be: "... Nokia reportedly spends 60% of its $2.7 billion research and development budget on software development. That is $1.62 billion per year, a level of commitment few competitors can make. As such, the development of OMA benefits Nokia, Microsoft, and Qualcomm the most. Although Sony-Ericsson has developed a platform for its upcoming P800 smart phone, it is under threat of losing funding from Ericsson. This would cripple its efforts to broaden and license a market-competitive platform. Motorola's strategy for smart phone software development has been marred by false starts and cutbacks. Others who were already challenged, such as Openwave, will only find their positions worsened. Samsung may benefit significantly by its leveraging of other companies' technologies.

let's see.