It’s going to be impossible, if it isn’t already, for people to deal with the complexity of the online world. I’m convinced that the only solution is to have agents that help us manage the complexity of information. I don’t think designing better interfaces is going to do it.
Predictor: Maes, Pattie
Prediction, in context:In a 1995 article for Wired magazine, Scott Berkun, a SI/Usability specialist at Microsoft, interviews artificial intelligence expert Pattie Maes, a leader in intelligent-agent research. Berkun quotes Maes saying:”The Internet is part of the motivation for agents – it’s going to be impossible, if it isn’t already, for people to deal with the complexity of the online world. I’m convinced that the only solution is to have agents that help us manage the complexity of information. I don’t think designing better interfaces is going to do it. There will be so many different things going on, so much new information and software becoming available, we will need agents that are our alter egos; they will know what we are interested in, and monitor databases and parts of networks.”
Biography:Pattie Maes , a researcher at MIT’s Media Lab, was a founder and board member of Firefly Network, Inc. in Cambridge, Mass. Ð one of the first companies to commercialize personalization and profiling technology (Firefly was acquired by Microsoft in 1998). She was also a founder and a board member of Open Ratings, Inc., a provider of performance data on businesses for B2B ecommerce. (Research Scientist/Illuminator.)
Date of prediction: January 1, 1995
Topic of prediction: Getting, Sharing Information
Subtopic: Intelligent Agents/AI
Name of publication: Wired
Title, headline, chapter name: Agent of Change: Pattie Maes Believes Software Agents Are Ready for Prime Time
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/3.04/maes_pr.html
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Anderson, Janna Quitney