Bots the Origin of New Species

It's well-written and treats the subject with respect, even if at times it is a bit lacking in technical details. A good overview of "computer programs which can travel".

><p> BOTS The Origin of a New Species by Andrew Leonard<p>A while back, am not sure why, I was bitten by an unsatisfying wish, need and desire to know what a software robot was. I looked here and there, specially Internet, trying to find the information I was seeking, but without good results. Then, I decided that a book would be a better choice. Things weren't going much better, till, finally, I found a few books on the subject. BOTS: The origin of a New Species was the newest of the group and had a title that ringed nicely to my ears, probably because I am an advocate of AI and its related branches.<p>Once the books arrived, BOTS was, I had decided, the one to be read first since the others were more technical -oriented to the how, why, where and what. That decision ended up being not just the right order of reading, but the only one.<p>BOTS is a simple book, written with an easy to understand and follow language. It's part a book of facts, part a sci-fi novel and part the story of an evolution.<p>BOTS showed, in a new bright way, how had software robots came to be, their pains, their stakes, the things that got lost, and the ones that were found.<p>In this book, told in beautiful full color are their past, their present, and a future that spreads wide open into a 3D universe.<p>BOTS is not a hard-core technical manual on software robots, nor is it a step by step guide on the how to, or a deep psychological analysis of the why -although it includes them in a restricted manner. It is, rather, a story told by a storyteller, on a quiet night, of how they became, and how their future might be like.<p>As the future comes along, and today goes into the past, BOTS might not be remembered as a bible on software robots, but it will indeed have a -deserved- special place, and could en up being considered a relic of/for Bots. Just like the Neuromancer (by William Gibson) is in the Cyberspace arena.<p>Leonard shows us the world of the -software- daemon kind, and in doing so, the future will tell, he himself became a daemon, but not of the human kind, but that of BOTS.

Agents on the Internet are not quite powerful enough yet to really be called lifeforms. Andrew Leonard does make the case that it may only be a matter of time until we who define ourselves as 'alive' have to change our definition. The book is _fun_ to read. The story of the multiplying Barneys in a virtual Texas town, the Mark V. Shaney Usenet posts, the evolving IRC channel protection bots .. all are wonderful stories of how the Internet is moving toward a plethora of artificial life. Highly recommended.

...and the Bot was kinda good, but kinda bad, too. But Bots, the book, gets a 9 out of 10 on the Good scale. Andrew Leonard has written a fascinating history, in sprightly lay tongue, of the beginning of bot evolution, plus insightful commentary on some of the implications of the critters. I don't agree with everything he says, but then, I don't agree with everything the bible says either. Bots has my unqualified recommendation for anyone interested in bots, artificial intelligence, the Internet, and the human-computer interface. I have written a more extensive review at http://ai.miningco.com/library/weekly/aa092197

This is another book review from Wolfie and Kansas, the boonie dogs from Toto, Guam. We approached Andrew Leonard's "Bots" The Origin of New Species" with trepidation. We dogs have a lot of trouble with scientific and technical matters. As Gary Larson noted in "The Far Side", the greatest dog scientists in the world have yet to unravel the mysterious workings of the doorknob. Before we read "Bots", the only computer or internet book we had been able to understand was "Dave Barry in Cyberspace". We were relieved to discover that Andrew Leonard is one of those rare writers, like Ed Regis, who makes technical and scientific matters comprehensible, and often interesting, even to a boonie dog.There are parallels between "Bots" and another recent book, Mark Derr's "Dog's Best Friend". Both Leonard and Derr divide their books largely into chapters that are based upon different tasks or functions performed by the species at issue. Both emphasize that they are discussing a species in which evolution is often guided by humans. For bots and dogs, survival of the fittest is often determined by utitility or appeal to humans. Both Leonard and Derr note that humans are not always successful at playing god, having produced both spambots and vicious pitbulls.Andrew Leonard indirectly raises another issue of great concern to dogs. He discusses PF Magic's bot cyberpets, Catz and Dogz. Leonard states that bot writer Profesor Ken Schweller speaks of bots "with a gentle affection, as if they were golden retrievers." One might think that we real dogs would worry that humans would replace us with bots. That need not be the case if writers like Mr. Leonard continue to explain things to us so well that we dogs can understand and interact with bots. After all, in Clifford Simak's classic science fiction novel "City", it was the dogs and the robots who ultimately got together and decided that the humans were expendable