Software robots date back to the 1950s and 60s, but they didn't begin to appear en masse until the 90s. Today's bots are smarter, more autonomous and more adaptive to their environment. Early bots crawled the Net for information. Archie looked for software available through the Net's file-transfer protocol. Of course, some bots simply annoy.
Spam bots collect e-mail addresses from online newsgroups for marketing pitches.
But other bots can be enjoyable. A bot named Digital frequents a chat room at Observers.net to give the latest weather and explain technical terms. Imagine surfing for information without access to search engines. Bots scan Web pages for links to discover even more pages. It's practically impossible to navigate your way without these resources.