Concept

The current working definition of agent society that we are adopting is the following:

An agent society is a multiagent agent system that is:

• • • • open: the agents can enter and leave the system freely;

      • organized: the working of the society is performed by articulated (possibly, hierarchically structured) groups of agents, so that each agent may (potentially) distinguish between the individual processes and the social processes occurring in the system (i.e., between the processes performed by single agents and processes performed by groups of agents);

      • persistent: the organizational forms of the groups of agents that perform social processes, and the organizational form of the society as a whole, persist in time, independently of which agents enter or leave the society (up to some minimal quantity of agents in the population of the agent society);

      • situated: the agents operate in a definite (real or simulated) environment, whose objects may be involved in the individual and social processes of the society.

(cf., e.g. On the Bases of an Architectural Style for Agent Societies: Concept and Core Operational Structure , available here)