Impersonator Software
Even if the IRGist doesn't read any of it, his "impersonator" still forwards bits of his daily digest to his other friend and colleague IRGists, all selections individually tailored to their perceived needs, and the feed back received from their remote impersonators.
The paper foresaw that unlike the monologues of newspapers, the IRG network would actually interact with users – perhaps sending them information they weren’t initially aware they needed, (thus solving the Relevance Paradox ) Such sends could be prompted by a question, which may have revealed it ignored certain important considerations.
Of course each user’s software could reach out to other unknown IRGists and perform the same service in response to a submitted query or piece of information. They could do this by sending out an information probe that would be transmitted from IRG to IRG until it reached any potential users – all such transits mediated by impersonator software to pick the most likely route from IRG to IRG and IRGist to IRGist.
In another paper published in the Journal of Information Technology, then edited by Professor Igor Aleksander of Imperial College,( Andrews, D. (1986) Information routing groups – ( Towards the global superbrain: or how to find out what you need to know rather than what you think you need to know, Journal of Information Technology, 1, 1, Feb, 22-35) ) it was described in detail how a sophisticated information economy could develop, with users charging virtual access and transit fees for other IRGist's probes to transit their various IRGs. Thus users could earn credit, simply by being well connected and held in good information stead, i.e. by building up an electronic reputation (similar to eBay ratings). These ratings could apply to various parameters - relevance, reliability, rigor etc.
The same impersonation software could organise the IRGists information in the IRG "public" domain area of his own PC, meaning that once an IRGist was identified as a credible expert in a particular area, other, even remote IRGists would have access to his files by means of searching that file space, but note, the search would be assisted by a local context and language changer - see later.
The IRG notion was triggered by the awareness of the various environmental social, medical, health and other difficulties with which human societies and organisations are faced; the fact that organizations and policies often don’t work efficiently or deliver expected results and sometimes delivering counter intuitive and counter productive results.
Read more about this topic: Information Routing Group