An introduction to agent technology -- Artificial societies and psychological agents -- Co-ordination in multi-agent systems -- Software agent technologies -- Information agents for the World Wide Web -- Multi-agent matchmaking -- An application of social filtering to movie recommendation -- Agents of change in business process management -- Agents, mobility and multimedia information -- A real-life experiment in creating an agent marketplace -- The roles of fuzzy logic and soft computing in the conception, design and deployment of intelligent systems -- An introduction to soft computing — A tool for building intelligent systems -- Basic concepts of a fuzzy logic data browser with applications -- Towards soft computing -- The rise of machine intelligence -- Intelligent software systems -- Machine intelligibility and the duality principle.

This carefully arranged book is mainly based on work done by the Intelligent Systems Research Group at BT Laboratories, essentially in cooperation with internationally leading scientists from outside BT. It opens with a detailed introduction surveying the area and putting the work presented in context. Conceptual issues surrounding intelligent agents and multi-agent systems are investigated and the practical and industrial applicability of this exciting new technology is demonstrated. One section is devoted to the rationale, philosophy, and techniques of the emerging area of soft computing. The final section outlines the broader context in dealing with machine intelligence in general and intelligent software systems in particular.