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Search might seem like an odd example, since at first it seems just like information, but then you realize how much physical work used to be involved in finding information even in a well indexed system. Card catalogs were an early manual technology for providing search-like access to the information spread out in space in the stacks of a library. Microfiche is a powered system for reducing the amount of effort in looking through periodicals. Modern automated retrieval systems are powered tools that even bring a particular book to you on request. Metrical tools like tables of contents and indexes help you jump to particular parts of content.

However, once information exploded on the internet, Yahoo!, Google, Bing, and its ilk made the task of searching easier, and even helped you with corrective tools when you misspelled something, or when you were using poor search terms. Did you mean . . .? When Google introduced Google Alerts, it introduced low-level agents by which users could set up topics of interest and let the information come find them.

So that’s just three examples. I’ll cover many more in the next chapter and throughout the rest of the book. These three are, of course, cherry-picked from the vast history of technology, but should help to illustrate how these lenses are a useful way to understand the ways that various technologies have worked to reduce effort around particular human problems in categorical ways, and how very recent technologies combine these aspects into agents.