Agents, Mobility and Virtuality : A Necessary Synergy

This paper will examine and explore the interplay
between the key ingredients of Agency, Mobility and
Virtuality. Several distinct themes
will be considered. Firstly the presentation will
address the issue of mediation of virtual
environments through the use of agent based systems.
In particular how agents can monitor user interaction
and based upon this assemble user profiles that may
subsequently be used for the dynamic, opportunistic
customisation of the virtual environment.
Secondly it will consider the issue of delivering
media content to the mobile citizen, when they need
it, where they need it and in a form relevant to their
technological context. Finally it will consider the
dualities that exist between mobile software artifacts
and mobile hardware artifacts. Specifically this will
be illustrated through the
deployment of systems of social Virtuality1 This paper will in particular explore the
interplay between these pivotal ingredients.
We will seek to achieve such an investigation
through reference to several on-going research
projects currently active within the PRISM (Practice
and Research in Intelligent Systems & Media)
Laboratory. In particular we have witnessed a
converganace of certain key technologies that have
over the last few years proven of great interest to our
research. Indeed it has been our research goal of late
to effectively mine the emerging synergies.
Within this paper we examine several interesting
themes. Firstly we examine mobility and in particular
the similarities and contrasts that exist when
users/artifacts move within differing spaces. It has
long been recognised by the Computer Support for
Collaborative Work (CSCW) community that users
are distributed across a time dimension in addition to
their geographic dispersal.