Well, not quite. Despite years of research by both academia and commercial interests, agents are still rare creatures. But there are more and more would-be agent-runners and they may like to read "Key Issues in Agent Technology" by James Odell and compare it with a more general overview of AI, "Architectures for intelligent systems" by John Sowa.

For a contemporary example of agent technology, see ABLE or Agent Building and Learning Environment (described in this paper).

Addenda: see also Odell's columns at Journal of Object Technology:

• "Objects and Agents Compared"
• "Agents and Complex Systems"
• "Agent-Based Manufacturing: A Case Study"