[Sigia-l] Back-up Brains and IA

[Silverio.Petruzzellis at cezannesw.com]

I came across a review on the Knowledge Management magazine website about the Microsoft Research project named MyLifeBits, whose goal is to fulfill the visionary idea of the US academic Vannevar Bush who, in 1945, forsaw the future creation of a device which would have become "an enlarged intimate supplement to memory".

KM Magazine reviewer underlines that...
"The researchers recognise, however, that the biggest challenge will come with deciding on how best to organise the material. They are currently working on developing a taxonomy that will accommodate the huge range of associations and relationships the material will require."
Here's the link to the article 
http://www.kmmagazine.com/xq/asp/sid.7C42661F-083F-11D7-9D3E-00508B44AB3A/articleid.F9BB676F-8137-4C0B-AC74-30A3CAC21271/qx/display.htm

I was wandering if the same concepts and guidelines that rules the work of an IA to design an affordable and effective organization of information in any kind of website could still work when dealing with our own brain connections, often free of any logical relationship between the nodes of this huge network of elements.
Will it be possible and above all useful to apply those principles we are familiar with to a hypothetical huge storage device for our daily life?

For further info on MyLifeBits have a look at
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99993084
http://research.microsoft.com/barc/MediaPresence/MyLifeBits.aspx
For further info on Vannevar Bush and Memex have a look at
http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/flashbks/computer/bushf.htm
http://www.press.jhu.edu/press/books/landow/memex.html

Rgds

Silverio Petruzzellis
Information Architect
Product Management Team
Cézanne Software S.r.l.

http://www.cezannesw.com
mailto:silverio.petruzzellis at cezannesw.com

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