WEB TECHNOLOGIES Agent Hell

It was a pleasant, warm evening. Franco found a soft grassy area in the park, and sat down. He took a packed ball of spaghetti from his left pocket and an open beer from the right. He ate, drank, and rested quietly in the fading light of a beautiful Spring evening. It wasn’t a night to spend with the Salvation Army, he thought, as he watched the darkening sky. “Please stand up and report to the nearest police station! City laws forbid vagrants from sleeping in the park at night.” Startled by the harsh synthetic voice of the park control system, Franco looked up and saw that one of those irritating all-look-the-same yuppies was scrambling for a place to hide with his girlfriend. He saw, too, that—like every other boy of his age and social class that year—this one was wearing a pair of Timberland boots, carefully dirtied so he could appear as poor as possible. Obviously, one of those ridiculously simple software agents that were dispersed in every corner of the city – and that the mayor never managed to deactivate despite the European Commission resolution in this regard – had mistakenly identified the prosperous kid as a vagrant because of his scruffy boots.