Towards Cross-Media Information Spaces and Architectures

Abstract

The efficient management and retrieval of information via dedicated devices and data structures has been investigated since the early days of Vannevar Bush’s seminal article As We May Think introducing the Memex. However, nowadays information is usually fragmented across different media types, devices as well as digital and physical environments, and we are often struggling to retrieve specific information. We discuss three main issues to be addressed when developing solutions for managing information in these co-called cross-media information spaces. First, we have a look at an extensible cross-media linking solution based on the resource-selector-link (RSL) hypermedia metamodel where information can be integrated across applications, devices as well as digital and physical information environments. We then outline some of the limitations of existing digital document formats which are often just a simulation of paper documents and their affordances on desktop computers, and discuss more flexible document representations for cross-media information spaces. Further, new forms of human-information interaction and cross-media user interfaces—including some recent work on dynamic data physicalisation—are discussed. A number of research artefacts are used to illustrate different aspects of the presented data-centric approach for cross-media information spaces and architectures. Last but not least, we provide an outlook on how the embedding of the presented concepts at the level of an operating system might ultimately lead to new possibilities for cross-media information management and innovative forms of human-information interaction.