Agent Chameleons: Migration and Mutation within and between Real and Virtual Spaces

Abstract

This paper introduces the concept of Agent Chameleons and investigates the motivation, desire and possibilities of agent migration and mutation within and between real and artificial spaces. Information spaces manifest themselves in many forms. Benefits exist where the agent/user is immersed and feels a sense of presence within such spaces. Agents often take on an embodied form. This form embodies the agent together with its associated behaviours and capabilities. The agent behaviour is inextricably mediated by a set of laws, the agent physics laws. This paper investigates the possibility of agents seamlessly migrating across traditional impervious inter-world boundaries and the associated possibility of agent forms mutating in order to empower itself. Such mutation may occur as the agent context changes. Context shifts can occur as the agent migrates from one world to another or indeed when environmental factors change within a given world