Weaving A Web of Ideas

This is part of IEEE Spectrum's special R&D report: They Might Be Giants: Seeds of a Tech Turnaround. Our own little software robots, they were supposed to represent us on the World Wide Web, which was already shaping up to be more information than any unaided human could sift through. Agents were going to know all about our needs, likes, and interests. They would forage every night for news and information, book our business travel for us, even do the preliminary research for our next management report. These robots were hard to build--too hard, actually. After all, Web pages are designed for human consumption. Words have meaning, indeed, multiple meanings: Is a particular document on "banking" about saving money or turning an airplane?