I have a dream for the Web [in which computers] become capable of analyzing all the data on the Web – the content, links, and transactions between people and computers. A ‘Semantic Web’, which should make this possible, has yet to emerge, but when it does, the day-to-day mechanisms of trade, bureaucracy and our daily lives will be handled by machines talking to machines. The ‘intelligent agents’ people have touted for ages will finally materialize.
Tim Berners-Lee 1999
Lots of chatter around Facebook likes replacing links and that being the path to search dominance. I dont disagree that personalized recommendations from my friends trump links proposed by Google. However, I believe that intelligent agents that know my preferences, can maintain my anonymity, can scan recommendations from friends and can work on my behalf trump likes. This may be the dreams of a trekkie, or the long held beliefs of a early 80s era computer science major when AI was a big deal - but it will happen sooner or later.
