Witnessing in merging biological, social and algorithmic realities is crucial to trust, as modelled in the YUTPA framework. Being witness and bearing witness is fundamental to human interaction. System participation in human communities of practice challenges the notion of witnessing and therefore the ability to build trust. Nevertheless, through trial and error, people in a variety of practices have found ways to establish the presence and develop trust in merging realities. This paper presents the results of 20 in-depth interviews with (...) professionals from a variety of disciplines and nations. The conclusion of cumulative analysis is that systems do not witness themselves, but their output deeply affects the mental maps that human beings make of each other, the world around them and their own self. Essential qualities human beings seek when being involved with other beings are defined by granularity and reciprocity in the design of time (duration of engagement, synchronizing performance, integrating rhythms and moments to signify), place (body sense, material interaction, emotional space and situated agency), relation (shared meaning, engagement, reputation and use) and action (tuning, reciprocity, negotiation and quality of deeds). By designing granular interaction in 4 dimensions, reciprocity in witnessing obtains significance and the basis for establishing trust in a variety of presences emerges while human agency acquires potential. (shrink)

Software agents that play a role in E-commerce and E-government applications involving the Internet often contain information about the identity of their human user such as credit cards and bank accounts. This paper discusses whether this is necessary: whether human users and software agents are allowed to be anonymous under the relevant legal regimes and whether an adequate interaction and balance between law and anonymity can be realised from both the perspective of Computer Systems and the perspective of Law.

Software agents extend the current, information-based Internet to include autonomous mobile processing. In most countries such processes, i.e., software agents are, however, without an explicit legal status. Many of the legal implications of their actions (e.g., gathering information, negotiating terms, performing transactions) are not well understood. One important characteristic of mobile software agents is that they roam the Internet: they often run on agent platforms of others. There often is no pre-existing relation between the owner of a running agents process (...) and the owner of the agent platform on which an agent process runs. When conflicts arise, the position of the agent platform administrator is not clear: is he or she allowed to slow down the process or possibly remove it from the system? Can the interests of the user of the agent be protected? This article explores legal and technical perspectives in protecting the integrity and availability of software agents and agent platforms. (shrink)