Desperately Seeking: Helping Hands and Human Touch

Abstract

We are living in a time of increasing information overload. Many solutions have been or are being drawn up to tackle this problem. However, today's most prominent solutions - such as Information Push and Search Engines - do not seem to be able to fully handle the problem. In this paper we will look at a number of solutions which may help us deal with information overload in the online marketplace. These solutions include "agency", agent-like applications, improvements in the information chain and - most importantly - information brokering. Some of these solutions require changes in the whole groundwork underlying the online marketplace; they are about whole new ways of interfacing with the online marketplace as well as the full employment of possibly intelligent software agents.