AGENTS AND AGREEMENT TECHNOLOGIES The Next Generation of Information Distributed Systems

With the new generation of distributed systems a new paradigm emerges: Technology Agreement. Autonomy, interaction, mobility and openness are the characteristics that the paradigm will cover from a theoretical and practical perspective. Semantic alignment, negotiation, argumentation, virtual organizations, learning, real time, and several other technologies will provide the tools to define, specify and verify such systems. The new paradigm will be structured around the concept of agreement between computational entities. These agreements must be consistent with the policy context in which they are established and will, once accepted, that entites will call for mutual services and compliance. An entity, by virtue of being autonomous, may choose to comply or not an agreement, and they should meet an obligation when it is infered from the agreements made. Security on execution will be based on measures of trust and reputation. These measures will help in the decision-making process for institutions to determine with whom to interact and accept terms of agreement.