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The Open Agent Architecture #OAA#, developed and used for several years at SRI International, makes it possible for software services to be provided through the cooperative e#orts of distributed collections of autonomous agents. Communication and cooperation between agents are brokered by one or more facilitators, which are responsible for matching requests, from users and agents, with descriptions of the capabilities of other agents. Thus, it is not generally required that a user or agent know the identities, locations, or number of other agents involved in satisfying a request. OAA is structured so as to minimize the e#ort involved in creating new agents and #wrapping" legacy applications, written in various languages and operating on various platforms; to encourage the reuse of existing agents; and to allow for dynamism and #exibilityin the makeup of agent communities. Distinguishing features of OAA as compared with related work include extreme #exibility in using fac...

It is proposed that goals can be activated outside of awareness and then operate nonconsciously to guide self-regulation effectively (J. A. Bargh, 1990). Five experiments are reported in which the goal either to perform well or to cooperate was activated, without the awareness of participants, through a priming manipulation. In Experiment 1 priming of the goal to perform well caused participants to perform comparatively better on an intellectual task. In Experiment 2 priming of the goal to cooperate caused participants to replenish a commonly held resource more readily. Experiment 3 used a dissociation paradigm to rule out perceptual-construal alternative explanations. Experiments 4 and 5 demonstrated that action guided by nonconsciously activated goals manifests two classic content-free features of the pursuit of consciously held goals. Nonconsciously activated goals effectively guide action, enabling adaptation to ongoing situational demands. We must give up the insane illusion that a conscious self, however virtuous and however intelligent, can do its work singlehanded and without assistance. —Aldous Huxley, The Education of an Amphibian Today, most theories of goal pursuit emphasize conscious choice and guidance of behavior on a moment-to-moment basis

This paper develops new economic models to synthesize and interpret the empirical literature on human skill formation. It presents simple formal economic models of child development that capture the essence of recent findings from the empirical literature. The goal of this essay is to provide a theoretical framework for interpreting the evidence from a vast empirical literature, for guiding the next generation of empirical studies, and for formulating policy. Central to our analysis is the concept that childhood has more than one stage, and that policies need to be tailored to each one. We formalize the concepts of self productivity and complementarity of human capital investments and use them to explain the evidence on skill formation. Together, they explain why skill begets skill through a skill multiplier process. Skill formation is a lifecycle process. It starts in the womb and goes on throughout most of the adult life. Families play a

A penetrating analysis of our technical civilization and of the effect of an increasingly standardized culture on the future of man

Abstract not found

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This paper presents a productivity argument for investing in disadvantaged young children. For such investment, there is no equity-efficiency tradeoff.