The idea is simple.
Intelligent agents trek through cyberspace and fetch stuff.
Unlike Web search engines that scan existing data bases, agents are free-roaming pieces of code that roam out across the Internet, searching for information that satisfies your stated need. An agent learns new things and alters its own commands based on its growing knowledge of its controller. You provide the initial instructions, but once it leaves your control it's on its own. By allowing us to set our desires on auto-pilot, agented online commerce and entertainment could yield profits unimagined outside the pages of Wired or the promotional literature of Silicon Valley's venture capital firms. Back in 1967, Marshall McLuhan, the father of all media theorists, explained to a bewildered Barbara Walters that the discomfort associated with electronic media stems from the fact that it transports the people who use it.