Covers the history of automated program robots, from Eliza, through the various MUD worlds (killing Barney's, earning MOOlah), to web spiders and other crawlers. The escalation of spamming and cancelbots on the Usenet illustrates the problems that have only begun. Now that they are cleverly called "agents," I'm sure the problems are solved. Much of the complexity relates to attempts to properly categorize using AI, expert systems, and complex indexes. ( )

"A bot is a software version of a mechanical robot ... Strings of code written by everyone from teenage chat-room lurkers to topflight computer scientists, bots are variously designed to carry on conversations, act as human surrogates, or achieve specific tasks... Bots entertain, annoy, work, and play." Thus writes the author of this fascinating taxonomy of cyberspace's first indigenous species, related by circumstance, by example, and by habitat. While originally meant to do our bidding, in the hands of computer hackers, bots disable computing systems, engage in personal attacks, and generally cause nuisances all over the Internet. With the lines blurring between on-line and off-line, between virtual reality and physical reality, bots have great potential for organizing our lives or sabotaging them. In this original, startling book Leonard recounts the saga of these software robots in all its quirkiness: from the trials and tribulations of artificial intelligence to the hilarious lifestyle of the first bots and the havoc they set in motion.
Bots also constructs a playful history of the Internet, tracking it from the free-form ASCII-text playground of clipheads, researchers, and scientists to the sprawling, advertising-laden cultural entity it has become. Accessibly written with great foresight, Bots not only makes understandable a highly confusing phenomenon, it also explores and expertly analyzes the psychology and anthropology of popular technology.