| Bots is the story of cyberspace's first indigenous species. Strings of code, bots are a software version of a mechanical robot. Originally meant to do our bidding, when unleashed by computer hackers bots can disable computing systems and engage in personal attacks, and are capable of causing nuisance and chaos all over the Internet. Bots have great potential for either organizing our lives or sabotaging them. In telling the tale of the development of software robots, Andrew Leonard constructs a playful, fascinating, anecdote-rich history of the Internet, tracking it from the free-form ASCII-text playground of chipheads, researchers, and scientists to the sprawling, advertising-laden, cultural entity it has become. In an expert and entertaining book, Leonard makes a sophisticated subject understandable, and explores the psychology and anthropology of popular technology.
Cyberspace is now heavily populated with non-human residents known as bots. Bots are software robots that facilitate e-mail, entertain visitors, fight for control of IRC chat rooms or flood your e- mail box with spam. Andrew Leonard is the Charles Darwin of bots, chronicling their rise from the primordial cyber-ooze to their becoming major players as both drudge workers and nuisances of the computerized world. The world of bots and their creators is filled with serious issues pertaining to online freedom, and is sometimes downright disturbing, but it is also often hilariously funny. The author takes us from the problems of recognizing artificial intelligence to the almost slapstick comedy of programming bungles. Leonard deftly reveals it all in a book that's extremely hard to put down.
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