In current information systems, information is passive. People act upon it, either sending it to known destinations or pulling it from known sources. InformANTS makes information active, enabling it to move actively from one user to another. This paper introduces the InformANTS vision and describes one of its major system components, the Information Matching System. Particular emphasis is placed on the distinctive self-organizing processes from which emerge the information exploration and exploitation capabilities of InformANTS.
Rainer Hilscher, Sven Brueckner, Theodore C. Beldi