Toru Ishida – författare

In the era of ubiquitous computing and networking, millions of electronic devices with computing facilities in the public space are connected with each other in ad hoc ways, but are required to behave coherently. Massively multi-agent systems, MMAS can be a major design paradigm or an implementation method for ubiquitous computing and ambient intelligence. As the infrastructure of massively multi-agent systems, technologies such as grid computing together with semantic annotation can be combined with agent technology. A new system design approach, society-centered design, may be realized by embedding participatory technologies in human society.

This book originates from the First International Workshop on Massively Multi-Agent Systems, MMAS 2004, held in Kyoto, Japan in December 2004. The 25 revised full selected and invited papers give an excellent introduction and overview on massively multi-agent systems. The papers are organized in parts on massively multi-agent technology, teams and organization, ubiquitous computing and ambient intelligence, and massively multi-agent systems in the public space.

There is increasing interaction among communities with multiple languages, thus we need services that can effectively support multilingual communication. The Language Grid is an initiative to build an infrastructure that allows end users to create composite language services for intercultural collaboration. The aim is to support communities to create customized multilingual environments by using language services to overcome local language barriers. The stakeholders of the Language Grid are the language resource providers, the language service users, and the language grid operators who coordinate the former.

This book includes 18 chapters in six parts that summarize various research results and associated development activities on the Language Grid. The chapters in Part I describe the framework of the Language Grid, i.e., service-oriented collective intelligence, used to bridge providers, users and operators. Two kinds of software are introduced, the service grid server software and the Language Grid Toolbox, and code for both is available via open source licenses. Part II describes technologies for service workflows that compose atomic language services. Part III reports on research work and activities relating to sharing and using language services. Part IV describes various applications of language services as applicable to intercultural collaboration. Part V contains reports on applying the Language Grid for translation activities, including localization of industrial documents and Wikipedia articles. Finally, Part VI illustrates how the Language Grid can be connected to other service grids, such as DFKI''s Heart of Gold and smart classroom services in Tsinghua University in Beijing.

The book will be valuable for researchers in artificial intelligence, natural language processing, services computing and human--computer interaction, particularly those who are interested in bridging technologies and user communities.

Here we use the term "field" to refer to a sphere of practical operation, and correspondingly the term "field informatics" describes informatics tools and methodologies that arise in the field. The components of field informatics are description, prediction, design and transfer, and the methods for those components vary widely. For example, we consider the social goal of revitalizing a mountainous area experiencing depopulation and we show how the tools and methodologies of field informatics may be used to describe such situations using remote sensing, biologging, human sensing and ethnography; the effects of various solutions can be predicted using system dynamics and multiagent simulations; the solutions can be designed using inclusive design or participatory design methods; and finally the experience gained can be transferred using case writing and outreach communication.

The authors are specialists in diverse areas such as informatics, engineering, agriculture, sociology and pedagogy, and their areas of interest range from environment conservation to social education for international cooperation. They have a particular focus on the environment in southeast Asia and related topics such as large-scale traffic simulations, participatory workshops, inclusive design workshops, distance learning, and intercultural collaboration.