Matching the Infoverse: About Knowledge Networks, Knowledge Workers, and Knowledge Robots Joachim Hasebrook Head of Unit Concept/Program Development, Bank Academy & University of Banking, and CEO Knowbotic Systems Inc. Ltd. Humans are not able to cope with the exponential growth of information and the increasing speed of information and business processes fostered by information and communication technologies. Technical support not only for information storage and retrieval but also for information selection, process planning, and decision support is needed. Moreover, the use of a (desktop) computer is restricted in many ways. In this paper, it is predicted that smart and mobile computing units embedded in a variety of things, such as TV sets and cars, will bring computing power close to their users. It is also predicted that users will get closer to computing power by using natural language and by using their social skills in computer mediated communication. A holistic architecture of knowledge robots (knowbots) is described based on multi-agent platforms and distributed computational intelligence. Knowbots consist of a self-learning artificial brain, speech recognition and synthesis, direct access to other software agents and computer programs, and direct connections to networks of human users. It is pointed out that a newly defined partnership between men and machine is a possible way to keep control of the exploding 'infoverse'. Reasoning and simulation mechanisms of currently unthinkable complexity will take over the control of process planning and information exchange. Fourth generation robots with the capability of performing more than 30 million instructions per seconds (MIPS) will be the heart of a company's knowledge base. This is the vision propagated by Hans Moravec, Principal Research Scientist at the Robotics Institute and Director of the Mobile Robot Laboratory of Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh (USA). The global economy gets accustomed to the idea of the 'new economy' where the knowledge workers' creativity and skills are the companies' most important capital and competitive advantage. If only parts of Moravec's vision come true, however, it will certainly mean that the relevance of human expertise and experience will diminish. Current developments seem to support this point of view: A supplier of computer storage systems reports that especially banks are consuming more storage space within six months than has been used during the last twenty years; the increasing speed of product innovation and life cycles depreciate technological knowledge and skills within one to three years. The 'infoverse' stored in the worldwide Internet starts to exceed the amount of information that has been stored in more than 60,000 years of human culture before: It has been estimated that in the years 1972 to 1980 more information has been collected than in the 2000 years before. Fifty years after the publication of the first Gutenberg bible about two million books had been published; today, more than 3000 books are published per day, more than one million per year. Some authors, therefore, are discussing the advent of the 'age of knowledge'. Others, however, argue that the Internet is not more than a gigantic heap of information garbage. Recent studies show that we are not able to remember more than one to two percent of all the information we perceive in the mass media, such as radio, TV, or newspapers. A single search engine covers not more than about twenty to thirty percent of the World Wide Web pages, meta-search services using more than one search engine comprise about fifty to sixty percent of the WWW pages. Even the best text searching and indexing techniques do not come up with more than 25 percent of relevant links or search results, that is, an optimal search process accesses a quarter of a half of the information in the Internet - and one or two percent of this information can be remembered. Thus, we have to state that we have lost control over all the information gathered in technical systems. Exponential growth of information, information access at light speed and the increasing speed of business processes and the decreasing value of human knowledge force to re-focus the development of information and communication technologies (ICT). Information accessibility is no longer the main concern, but navigation, orientation and selection of relevant information. As computers and robots provide us with incredible capabilities to process increasing amounts of data within decreasing periods of