Agency a Unifying Concept within Distributed Artificial Intelligence and CSCW

Abstract

This paper seeks to explore the relationship between CSCW and Distributed Artificial Intelligence (DAI). In recent years a convergence of research effort has been witnessed in these two fields of research. The former concerns itself with the development of methods and tools that facilitate the collaborative work of groups of people, who may typically be distributed through, not merely a geographic plane, but also a temporal plane. The latter however, is concerned primarily with the development of a new generation of intelligent systems, which seek to encompass a multi-agent philosophy where smaller grained intelligent units or “agents” interact in a mutually beneficial manner in the solution of community goals.