Sandpit: SerenA - Chance Encounters in the Space of Ideas

我们生活在一个信息迅速增长、信息获取越来越快的时代。万维网使我们的社会和环境发生了许多积极的变化，例如通过社交网络和电子出版，但它本身也带来了问题。现在信息传播如此之快，以至于个人不可能意识到足够的信息以使他们能够利用它。更重要的是，由于信息过载，我们不得不越来越依赖搜索工具来找到我们想要的东西。虽然现有的搜索工具运行得很好，但经过一些实践使用后，它们只能给我们提供与我们所要求的关键词直接匹配的信息。这显然是有用的，但它的缺点是，我们比以前更不可能注意到与我们相关的外围事物、情况或人，比如导致发现青霉素的那种偶然或快乐的意外。人们越来越难注意到这种联系，一方面是因为我们更加狭隘地关注如何搜索新知识，另一方面是因为我们使用的搜索系统非常直白，根本没有想象力。这个项目旨在设计一个名为Serena的意外之心竞技场，它将主动搜索用户文档和Web上的信息，以识别与他们的工作和环境相关的知识和联系。其目标不仅是像现有系统那样搜索共享关键字，还将利用自动化推理和计算创造力的最先进技术，通过基于隐喻和类比的更高级搜索，识别用户不知道他们需要知道的东西。Serena将作为工作环境中的实体存在，并通过智能手机等个人技术实现。在用户的许可下，Serena将主动搜索用户本地环境中的人和信息，包括物理和虚拟环境，例如，允许它建议彼此不认识的人可能会在会议中发现一些价值(可能是因为他们对学术世界的特定方面有共同的兴趣)，或者建议一篇在特定电子期刊上被关键词搜索遗漏的论文(因为它与正在搜索的用户感兴趣的其他事情有联系)。SerenA将拥有自己的文档分析技术，但它也将利用通过语义网获得的日益丰富的信息。该项目将包括开发一个关于音乐和音乐学的信息试验台，作为可以从这一使能技术中受益的学术领域的典范。重要的是，Serena将拥有特别设计和仔细验证的用户界面，使每个对学习和发现感兴趣的人都能理解它，无论是哪种类型。SerenA的目标是让人和机器比以往任何时候都更紧密地联系在一起，增强用户的知识和他们与可能对他们重要的人互动的能力。

We live in an age of burgeoning information, and increasingly fast information access. The WorldWide Web has allowed us to make many positive changes in our society and environment, for example through social networking and e-publishing, but it also presents problems, by its very nature. There is now so much information being spread so quickly that it is becoming impossible for individuals to be aware of enough of it to enable them to take advantage of it.What is more, because of the information overload, we are having to rely more and more on search tools to find what we want. While existing search tools work quite well, after a bit of practice in using them, they are only able to give us information directly matching keywords in what we ask for. This is clearly useful, but its down side is that we are less likely than before to notice peripheral things, situations or people who are relevant to us, in the kind of serendipity or happy accident that led, for example, to the discovery of penicillin. It's becoming harder to notice such connections, partly because we are more narrowly focused in how we search for new knowledge, and partly because the search systems we use are very literal and not imaginative at all.This project aims to design a Serendipity Arena, called SerenA, which will proactively search information available in users' documents and on the Web to identify relevant knowledge and connections related to their work and their environment. The aim is not merely to search for shared keywords, like existing systems, but to use state-of-the-art technology from automated reasoning and computational creativity to identify things that users did not know they needed to know, using more advanced search based on metaphor and analogy. SerenA will be implemented as a physical presence in the working environment, and via personal technology, such as smartphones. With its users' permission, SerenA will proactively search for people and information in a user's local environment, both physically and virtually, allowing it, for example, to suggest that people who don't know each other might find some value in meeting (perhaps because they share an interest in particular aspects of the academic world), or to suggest a paper omitted by keyword search in a particular e-journal (because it has connections with other things of interest to the user who is searching).SerenA will have its own document-analysis technology, but it will also take advantage of the increasingly rich information available via the Semantic Web. The project will include development of a test-bed of information about music and musicology, as an exemplar of an academic field that can benefit from this enabling technology. Importantly, SerenA will have specially designed and carefully validated user interfaces, to make it intelligible to everyone interested in learning and discovery, of whatever kind.SerenA aims to draw man and machine closer together than ever before, enhancing its users' knowledge and their ability to interact with people likely to be important to them.