The tracers view the surfer as the best guide to the web. Much like nineteenth-century polar explorers desiring to establish whether and how their compatriots before them actually found some sense of 'the Pole', the tracers seek evidence of previous surfer presence and pathways to determine whether and how they found some sense of 'artificial intelligence', 'botany' or whatever other topic they were researching. 2 Tracers look for vestiges of how surfers have found what they were after. They then plot these pathways through the sources, and search for meaning. The meaning may be the best bi-ways to the information, which is useful for search engine logicians, or the meaning may be particular stories.
Agency lies first of all with the surfer.
Contrary to the information expedition model, the 'rubbers' take an archaeological tack. They see storylines within the existing webworks. Instead of looking for the ice pick, the piece of clothing or other traces left behind by previous expeditioners, they locate the graveyards and the gravestones, and 'rub' them for meaning. Web sites are the stones, and hyperlinks connect them in a yard. Rubbers look for meaning given not by the surfer routings, but by webmasters' markings, i.e., the text and hyperlinks on the sites they administer.