Turing Day 
@
İstanbul Bilgi University
Turing Days '07: Agent Based Computing
May 5, 2007
|Invited Addresses|| Programme || Turing Days' 06 || Turing Days' 05 || Turing Day' 04 || Turing Day' 03 || Turing Days' 02 | | Türkçe |
This will be the sixth of the Turing Days organised by the Department of Computer Science at Istanbul Bilgi University. Turing Days in Istanbul brings speakers to discuss the theory of computation and some of its implementations.
 
Our activity is named in memory of Alan Mathison Turing, the British mathematician (and, more famously, cryptologist) who was one of the founders of computational theory.

The theme of  the "Turing Days' 07" is Agent Based Computing. The leading scientists in the field will give introductory seminars for general audience. Also, they will talk over more sophisticated topics regarding their specific research interests.

The term "agent" describes a software abstraction, an idea, or a concept, similar to OOP terms such as methods, functions, and objects. The concept of an agent provides a convenient and powerful way to describe a complex software entity that is capable of acting with a certain degree of autonomy in order to accomplish tasks on behalf of its user. But unlike objects, which are defined in terms of methods and attributes, an agent is defined in terms of its behavior.

Various authors have proposed different definitions of agents, these commonly include concepts such as

* persistence (code is not executed on demand but runs continuously and decides for itself when it should perform some activity)
* autonomy (agents have capabilities of task selection, prioritization, goal-directed behaviour, decision-making without human intervention)
* social ability (agents are able to engage other components through some sort of communication and coordination, they may collaborate on a task)
* reactivity (agents perceive the context in which they operate and react to it appropriately).

The Agent concept is most useful as a tool to analyze systems, not as a prescription. The concepts mentioned above often relate well to the way we naturally think about complex tasks and thus agents can be useful to model such tasks. (Ref: wikipedia)

Anybody interested in, or wanting to learn about Agent Based Computing is welcomed!

Why Computational Theory?

In the field of computing, the theorists have had a much clearer vision than the practitioners. Ada Lovelace (1815-1852) the first programmer never saw the computer she was programming, Babbages's Analytical Engine, completed, but she wrote in 1840 about the possibility of using computers to compose music.

Alan Turing invented the purely theoretical "Turing machine" before computers became a practical reality, He, too, thought deeply about the possibility of using the computer for tasks other than routine calculations and proposed the "Turing test" to determine whether a computer program had really achieved artificial intelligence.

More "practical" people have often been notoriously wrong in their rather narrow estimations of the possibilities of computing:

"I think there is a world market for about five computers.", Thomas J. Watson, Chairman of IBM, 1943.
 
"There is no reason for anyone to have a computer in their home.", Kenneth Olson, President of Digital Equipment, 1977.

Conference Banners From Previous Years:
              

Programme:
Conference  Program

Place:
İstanbul Bilgi University,  Dolapdere Campus, D-130

Registration:
Please click here to register!  (Registration is free).

Address: Kurtuluş Deresi Cad. No: 47 34440 Dolapdere / İSTANBUL / TURKEY

Transportation:
 Click here for the map

Phone:  
(+90 212) 3115169

 E-mail & Coordination:
Aytek Debreli
adebreli AT cs bilgi edu tr

If you want to be an active participant at the conference, we ask you to send a message to adebreli AT cs bilgi edu tr  including a very short summary of what you intend to talk about. If you want to, you can also send an ordinary 6-10 pages long paper, to be included in the Conference Proceeding, provided we get the material not later than March 15.

Invited Addresses:

 Links

European Co-ordination Action for Agent Based Computing http://www.agentlink.org/
The foundation of Intelligent Physical Agents  http://www.fipa.org/
Agent-Based Computational Economics http://www.econ.iastate.edu/tesfatsi/ace.htm
Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_agent
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We hope that this meeting will continue to contribute in getting a wider view of computation theory...