Contact:cdent@burningchrome.com
Brown, J.S., & Duguid, P. (2000). Chapter 2: Agents and angels. In
_The social life of information_ (p. 35-62). Boston: Harvard
University Press.
John and Paul throw a wide net to call just about anything on the
Internet that does information gather an agent. That nets too big. An
agent should have some measure of distinguishing power for itself.
Without that, it's just a shovel. What we really want is a sieve.
But that's neither here nor there: their point is that we cannot
simply rely on agents to fulfill their promise of agency because they
cannot work like we do. They must have rules, rules that are strict,
in order to go finding things. When a human goes searching they are
not following strict rules, in fact they are often deliberately making
their approach very flexible so as to allow for serendipity.
If I were an international super spy I'm sure that I would have a very
large body of technology out there scurrying all over the Internet
gathering information, looking for patterns, classifying, diagnosing,
attempting to see things that I cannot see. These tools will be
useful. More useful, though, will be my army of human helpers who have
the simple job of just paying attention to stuff, feeling around. More
than likely they will use my body of technology but that body of
technology will augment them not replace them.
When the chips are down the awesome power is in the humans: the
ability to see what lies between things too close together or too far
apart. That thing that lies between, that inference, is the discovery,
is the secret, is the thing that I, international super spy, need to
know to protect and destroy nations or find the best Christmas present
for my beautiful wife.
Back to the Index