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Rating: 
Summary: In the beginning was the Bot...
Review: ...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
Rating:
Summary: Best non -too- technical overview of software Agents, yet
Review: <> BOTS The Origin of a New Species by Andrew Leonard 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. 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. 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. 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. In this book, told in beautiful full color are their past, their present, and a future that spreads wide open into a 3D universe. 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. 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. 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.
Rating:
Summary: BOT$ A non-techie view of agents on the net
Review: 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.
Rating: 
Summary: Superficial account of Bot history
Review: How to become a journalist? A cynic's answer could be: Collect some anecdotes about a theme, ask some questions to people who might know something about it, and wrap the information in an overdose of words. Leonard has taken the cynics' answers seriously. The theme chosen by Leonard is Bots, and the resulting piece of journalism is called "Bots, the origins of new species". It is easy to read (if the layout would allow it), not wholly uninformative, and with no technicalities or complex arguments at all. If you can stand the verbiage, you won't even get annoyed. In short, Leonard's work would fully deserve it's three stars for the average book, if only the title were correct. The subtitle of the book clearly suggests that Leonard tries to deal with Bots in a way that resembles the way Darwin treated living species. This is either a lie, or a sign of irreversible stupidity. At the very best Leonard stands to Darwin as gossip stands to science. Besides an extremely elementary, and implicit, classification of Bots he does nothing that even remotely resembles the work of a zoologist, let alone Darwin. Leonards' work is anecdotal, not scientific. The title shows a clear disregard for the buyer/reader. Hence, two stars.
Rating: 
Summary: Ambivalent Surprise
Review: I believed that this book was about robotics. Although not in-depth enough for this techie, this is one of the only general introductions to Software Bots or Agents that I have seen. If you want a fair introduction to the genesis of Bots this book will serve you, however you will not find pseudo code; math; or even modern coverage of bot technology. Overall the book leaves me ambivalent.
Rating: 
Summary: Are bots friends or foes of internet users?
Review: Leonard explores the advantages and downside of bots, software that operate with little or no human supervision. Like it or hate it, bots have become an essential tool for surfing the internet. Because of the internet's vast resources, users must rely on programs such as Yahoo and Excite to find relevant information. Leonard traces their development from the halls of academia to the board rooms of multinational firms. Bots were first called daemons, a greek term that means beings that mediate between humans and gods. Bots received this appellation because they are the mediating agent between computers and humans. Their number and abilities coincided with the complexity and diversity of the internet. Originally, bots were assigned the tasks of searching and retrieving information, but their duties expanded to include censoring, distributing on a massive scale, monitoring, and performing other functions. Their usefulness made them popular among programmers, who created and unleashed, sometimes recklessly, many bots into cyberspace. The variety of duties that bots perform result from the ongoing conflicts between users of the internet. There is an evolution between various forms of bots. For example, advertisers employ 'spambots' to solicit business whilst 'mailbots' filter unwanted emails, especially advertisements. These bots are becoming increasingly complex as each side attempts to thwart the efforts of the other. The often-times acrimonious relationship between various interest groups that use the internet and the increasing volume of e-commerce and internet surfers will only make the internet more vital but also more complex. Bots will only become more important and more sophisticated. Already there is research into creating bots that can evolve by themselves. As our lives become more entwined with the internet there will be continuous debates about the potential danger of relying too heavily on bots and whether bots, as they become more autonomous, constitute living beings.
Rating:
Summary: Are bots friends or foes of internet users?
Review: Leonard explores the advantages and downside of bots, software that operate with little or no human supervision. Like it or hate it, bots have become an essential tool for surfing the internet. Because of the internet's vast resources, users must rely on programs such as Yahoo and Excite to find relevant information. Leonard traces their development from the halls of academia to the board rooms of multinational firms. Bots were first called daemons, a greek term that means beings that mediate between humans and gods. Bots received this appellation because they are the mediating agent between computers and humans. Their number and abilities coincided with the complexity and diversity of the internet. Originally, bots were assigned the tasks of searching and retrieving information, but their duties expanded to include censoring, distributing on a massive scale, monitoring, and performing other functions. Their usefulness made them popular among programmers, who created and unleashed, sometimes recklessly, many bots into cyberspace. The variety of duties that bots perform result from the ongoing conflicts between users of the internet. There is an evolution between various forms of bots. For example, advertisers employ 'spambots' to solicit business whilst 'mailbots' filter unwanted emails, especially advertisements. These bots are becoming increasingly complex as each side attempts to thwart the efforts of the other. The often-times acrimonious relationship between various interest groups that use the internet and the increasing volume of e-commerce and internet surfers will only make the internet more vital but also more complex. Bots will only become more important and more sophisticated. Already there is research into creating bots that can evolve by themselves. As our lives become more entwined with the internet there will be continuous debates about the potential danger of relying too heavily on bots and whether bots, as they become more autonomous, constitute living beings.
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