1. An automated electronic information transporter located at a user station for controlling transport of information objects on a communications network providing access to multiple remote sources, the information transporter comprising: (a) a communications module which effects the fetching or sending of information objects across the network between at least one of the remote sources and persistent storage at the user station; and (b) a transport control module which controls transport of the information objects in accordance with: i) a source address for the at least one remote source; and ii) an object manifest specifying at least one information object to be transported; wherein a higher level software entity can be invoked to modify the object manifest, and wherein the higher level software entity comprises a viewer for at least one content type available on the communications network, the content type being selected from the group consisting of multimedia formats, video formats, sound formats and hypertext markup language ("HTML").