Obstacles to the adoption of mobile agents

The idea of mobile software agents has inspired many researchers ever since the term was coined probably by Jim White of General Magic around 1994, although the principal idea is much older. Shoch and Hupp at Xerox PARC published their idea of the Worms programs already in 1982, and they were in turn inspired by John Brunner's 1975 science fiction novel "The Shockwave Rider". However, almost thirty years after their inception, the only widespread incarnation of mobile software agents is malware. In this brief invited essay I take a personal and biased stab at commenting this situation.