Papers in PDF format

each referee would then tend to change adaptively over time. (Clearly such an assessment of others’ judgment
would usually be treated as highly personal and thus held only in encrypted form until needed.) This process
could be made visible to the user, or left to function purely in terms of how appropriate any particular media
resource was eventually found to be. Of course, whoever forwards any particular suggestion could also specify
their own assessment as to its priority, which would be automatically factored in to the overall process of
evaluation.
Thus the recommendations of a good friend, or some reference that was designated by a well-respected
professional colleague as being particularly important, might automatically be accorded “headline” status; at
least in some relevant section of content. Likewise, if a significant number of the 'lower' level members of one's
chosen community recommend a particular piece of information it will be automatically promoted to a
relatively more important position. Regular reference contributors might be structured into subject-based
interest groups, with all those on a physically localised freenet being one natural example. In fact, it seems
likely that whole new patterns of online association will develop within the context of such a media
recommendation and valuation environment. Note that initially 'anonymous' offerings are even possible, so
that brand new mental associates might surface from time to time through a review of those who have recently
offered the most astute suggestions.
However this filtration and sorting process is managed, the final media presentation would then be
personalised into the form chosen as most useful and attractive to the end user. Of course commercially-based
links could be seamlessly integrated into the same protocol. A standing subscription could retrieve the 'Top'
stories from a trusted news source. Informative ads from a company of interest, or a billing for the latest film
from a favourite director, might appear in a sidebar at the appropriate location within one's ‘Daily Us’. And
before too long we can expect to see well-known 'Mentors' selling their own personal selections of prioritised
reference lists on various subjects, for automatic inclusion into the purchaser’s online view of the world.
The scenario above would require some quorum of active participation to really take off, but the actual
selection and interactive arrangement of the information could be carried out primarily by specifically designed
software on each user’s system. Only a minimum of new centralised service is required. The basic “Home”
collection within the HyperWave environment for the Web might be adapted to support a first personal edition
of ‘The Daily Us’ [Maurer 1996]. Cooperative use of existing encryption standards like PGP could soothe any
qualms that users might have about broadcasting 'sensitive' recommendations, but the encryption/decryption
itself would add very little extra processing load since the reference links are so small. In the medium term, the
maturation of Java could provide the basis for very rapid dissemination of software to implement such a system
of interactive recommendation and presentation [Bank 1995].
Some resources on the Web already provide a 'thumbnail' image, along with a brief abstract about the content,
and this will become commonplace as PDF continues to establish itself as a de facto standard. Having such a
'sampler' file about each online resource would provide a simple means with which to format the surface layer
presentation of any 'accepted' suggestions. This image could either be sent as the recommendation itself,
together with data on the referee of the link (perhaps along with their own specific annotation message), or be
automatically downloaded only at the point of acceptance.
Valuation Process
One critical aspect of this overall scheme will be an intuitive means to provide feedback about the accuracy of
any recommendations coming through the system, essentially to 'Vote' on the relevance of each media resource
encountered. At first this would just be self-contained; giving the local assessment database a means to adapt
its 'rating' of each referee in terms of their success at tagging appropriate resources, from the point of view of
the recipient. Once there is some critical mass of participation in such a systematic sharing of value judgments,
however, new possibilities begin to open up.
An 'impartial' survey organisation could regularly issue nearly every user's system with a set number of
untraceable, but completely authenticated, units of 'judgment' (probably by way of offering participants some
valuable incentive). Existing digital cash theory and initiatives provide conceptual models for this [Chaum
1992]. These non-negotiable units could be automatically 'stamped' by one's own system, based on the same
criteria used for 'internal' assessment, then automatically returned to the issuing organisation. Negative value
judgments would 'cost' the user in the same way, but be subtracted from the score of the online resource. The
final, continuously updated results would clearly be of great importance to the commercial sector - and