An artificial society is an agent-based system that exhibits sociologically interesting behavior.
An agent-based system, which is also called an agent-based model, is a population of agents inhabiting an environment.
We can think of this environment as a virtual place like an e-store or a network of interconnected places like an e-shopping mall.
An agent is an abstraction of a person, organism, or robot. Mobile agents, like shoppers in a virtual mall, can move around in their environment, while stationary agents, like clerks in the virtual mall, have to stay put. An agent-based system consisting only of stationary agents is called a cellular automaton.
Agents can interact with their environment and can interact with each other. Agents can adapt, learn, reproduce, plan, think, believe, cheat, sacrifice, and rebel.