Just read an old interview from the year 97, in which Pattie Maes one of the leading artificial life researchers talked about the impact of personal software agents on the way we view our world: Interviewer: "It occurs to me that in contrast to processes like browsing in a library or on the Web, which expose you to new ideas, systems like Firefly give users data that's very narrow in scope. Will people's horizons be narrowed if they rely on personal agents?" Maes: "This is a very valid concern, but one which can be dealt with through good user interface design. If an agent only gives you what you like or what you ask for, then your view of the world will become more and more narrow. It's important to integrate the agent interface into a direct manipulation interface, or to integrate agent recommendations within an existing system where the user can also browse...."

But existing popular search engines like google dont interact with me. You can tell google a thousand times that the result of the query is quite interesting but you although would like to hear some other point of view . Google will ignore you and so step by step all people get google's opinion.So don't get me wrong, Ithink the web is a great invention but isnt it also narrowing our view? P.S.: the interview with Pattie Maes is available here.

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Lars Risan, an anthropologist from the University of Oslo spend 8 month at an artificial life lab in Sussex, England and wrote an interesting anthropological study about the "small tribe of Artificial Life researchers"....

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This article from BBC reports about a study which is disprooving the stereotype of a pimple-faced teenager locked in his bedroom. With 540 questionaires, it seems to be a huge study and it would be interesting to hear more about it if its finished. Via Slashdot

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