The new infomediaries Analysis/Commentary People often think of information as an "end-product" or result, the end of a long line of ducks in a row -- a duck that goes quack! But information also serves as a means to an end, rather than an end in itself. The end constitutes a decision, or -- yikes!-- an act. Jane married John, she says, because he has such wonderful qualities. (Yeah, right.) John married Jane, he says, because she was the girl of his dreams. (Yeah-yeah-yeah.) But looking back, didn't Jane overlook the fact that John ate with his hands? (Pudding, for goodness sakes!) John never mentions how Jane ignored his phone calls for months, and doused him with cold water when she found him sleeping on her doorstep. Each remodeled complex decision-making, based not on the intermediate decisions, and non-decisions, of their colorful romance, but on eternal, unchanging visions -- the shadow of a smile, and the immutable perfection that lingers in memory like the rhapsodic glamour of a dime novel. In short, humans live in retrospect, in reconstructed images of the eternal. We rational wannabes await mirrors for our minds to show us up as the inconsistent, intractable creatures we are. Perhaps science will help us map our complete logic. Take, for example, the program created by Sybil Shearin of MIT's Media Lab. "Apt Decision," Shearin's "infomediary" (accessible from the projects page at the Media Lab at MIT) uses intelligent agents -- mini helping programs -- to help an apartment shopper navigate an through the maze of his or her likes, dislikes, and intermediate decisions. The program was designed to serve as a dynamic decision-making tool for a person looking to rent an apartment. Apt Decision helps the program user determine priorities, make comparisons, and generally learn to know the profile of his or her preferences, wants, and needs. The World Wide Web already has infomediaries in the form of auction sites and shopping "malls" that inform as much as sell, and often serve as an initial fix on what's available, at what price, and where, rather than as final destinations for buying. Programs like Apt Decision assist in the maintenance of what is changeable and what is known and firm. Doubtless, the infosphere, as experts blithely call the collective repository of computerized data, awaits forms of automation that will resemble those of the human mind -- with all the disjointed and capricious leaps stored and nestled for future use. When this occurs, computer users may truly learn to know their own minds. Or lack thereof. September 13, 2000