The missing link

Web bots and personal agents are illusions. They don't wander around the Web searching for targeted information or executing intelligent decisions. Mostly, they are simply a contrived means of inputting a request into a search engine or relational database. Even the animated agents that appear as personal assistants or customer service avatars are simply novel interfaces to database files.

Unfortunately, most of the information on the Internet is disorganised, not categorised and extremely volatile in nature. It is soon outdated and there are far too many changes happening and too much information to keep track of. Even the most sophisticated of search engines or databases are not efficient when it comes to dealing with this kind of volatility. As bots and electronic agents are totally reliant upon search engines or database type algorithms, his same limitation must apply to them also – because it isn't possible to incorporate into their design enough intelligence to handle uncertainty, ambiguity and excessive volatility. Only humans can do this.

Databases and bots can provide pockets of order, but, are inherently incapable of dealing with the chaotic confusion of vast quantities of changing information. What is needed is a totally new paradigm – a different way of looking at databases, search engines, bots and personal electronic agents – a way in which these problems might be overcome.

It's time now to step back and take an overview of the Internet. It's a vast conglomeration of information and knowledge of gargantuan proportions; quite beyond the capability of the human mind to comprehend in its entirety. Alone, the task of dealing with all the knowledge available is too daunting, even to contemplate, but, by people taking different areas a knowledge and collaborating together, the task of making use of an unimaginably large knowledge base can become a practical reality.

The proposal here is that we forget about using databases for dealing with information and instead use them to create an environment for people to meet each other to exchange information. We also give up on the idea of bots and personal electronic agents as having any inherent intelligence and view them simply as message carriers – with humans providing any intelligence that might be needed. In this way, we can contemplate a living database – where all the information is held in the heads of people – where the human brain can be used strategically, to do all the clever sorting stuff.

What this paradigm shift implies is that instead of developing programs and systems that do our thinking for us, we think in terms of programs and systems that are personal to individuals: systems that act as if they were extensions to the human brain. In this way, we shouldn't be thinking about creating universal fountains of knowledge but of people, with extended powers to communicate and assist each other to take individual advantage of the knowledge that is available.

From this view point, it doesn't make sense to have bots or intelligent agent go out into the Internet environment to mine knowledge or select appropriate information for us to use. They aren't up to the job. It would make more sense to have bots or personal agents go out onto the Internet to find people, who an individual might be able to have useful collaborative communication with.

As we have seen, there are two basic structures that can help us to do this. Firstly a server side formatted space that can provide areas of contact. On the client side, we have the personal cafe which can be used to filter out the most appropriate contacts and provide an organised way of communicating with them. What we are looking for now is the link between the two.