Quick Reaction and Reading Recommendation - "Knowbot explorations in similarity space"

http://old.cni.org/pub/lita/think/Halbert.html

I think this imagining of the year 2010 is amazing. Halbert describes a wonderfully imaginative way to search for information.

Results of a search are translated into a visual representation. Tamara prefers the use of color and height to represent relevance.  Using a joystick, she navigates through a database planet, the red mountains representing the most relevant results, and blue valleys, the least.

I think this technology would be a great, interactive way to search for materials. Younger students might actually want to search databases than rely on Google.

I have never experienced Second Life first hand, but from my understanding of it, I can see a connection between the database that Halbert describes and Second Life.

Cost would probably be an issue, but I would most assuredly place it in the "want category".

Halbert, M. (1992). Knowbot explorations in similarity space. In R. Miller &

M. Wolf (Eds.), Thinking robots, an aware Internet, and cyberpunk librarians: The 1992 LITA president's program presentations. Retrieved from http://old.coni.org/pub/lita/think/Halbert.html