Marketplaces are an important system in our society. The marketplace is the embodiment of a society's economy, a system whereby objects exchange hands. Marketplaces are also an important social center, one of the primary places in which people casually meet and interact. Marketplaces range in scale from neighborhood garage sales to nationwide mall chains to global commodities markets.
As individuals participating in consumer markets we experience the marketplace not as a whole system but rather as a set of constituent pieces. We understand markets in terms of goods to buy, money to buy with, the places where we perform our transactions and the people we talk to while dealing. The marketplace may be a complicated system but we experience it as a collection of familiar objects, places, people.
But in the past century the marketplace has changed, has become more of a virtual experience. We are becoming removed from the objects we purchase, buying items unseen from catalogs and television shows. The physical space of the market has disappeared into the television screen and web pages. But one aspect of the traditional marketplace largely remains intact: the social process of making a transaction. Buying a commodity usually requires talking to another human being, if not in person then at least on the telephone or via email.
But even the social aspect of negotiation is changing. Making a transaction in person takes time, attention, resources. The Kasbah system being developed in the Software Agents group at the MIT Media Lab aims to replace the process of human to human negotiation with the interaction of software agents, virtual actors who haggle prices on the behalf of the people who created them. Such a system could have broad appeal: agents can make buying goods much easier, more efficient, trouble-free. Is this a desirable goal? What objects can we use to mediate the communications between people and their agents? What will the marketplace become, will it be a system devoid of all familiar physical objects, spaces and interactions?
This paper discusses the future of marketplaces in light of the objects and human interactions that go into the markets themselves. As a framework for discussion several important aspects of people's experiences with marketplaces are considered. A trial run of the Kasbah agent marketplace is then located in this framework, analyzing how the various objects that went into Kasbah shaped participants' experiences. Finally, lessons drawn from this analysis are applied as guidelines for designing the virtual marketplace of the future.
