Sandpit: SerenA - Chance Encounters in the Space of Ideas

我们生活在一个信息飞速发展的时代，获取信息的速度越来越快。万维网使我们能够在社会和环境中做出许多积极的改变，例如通过社交网络和电子出版，但它也带来了问题，就其本质而言。现在有如此多的信息传播得如此之快，以至于个人不可能足够了解它，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于搜索工具来找到我们想要的东西。虽然现有的搜索工具工作得很好，但在使用它们的一些实践之后，它们只能给我们提供与我们要求的关键字直接匹配的信息。这显然是有用的，但它的缺点是，我们不太可能像以前那样注意到与我们相关的周边事物，情况或人，就像意外发现青霉素那样。注意到这种联系变得越来越困难，部分原因是我们更狭隘地关注如何搜索新知识，部分原因是我们使用的搜索系统非常字面化，根本没有想象力。这个项目旨在设计一个名为SerenA的Serendipity Arena，它将主动搜索用户文档和网络上可用的信息，以识别与他们的工作和环境相关的相关知识和联系。其目的不仅仅是像现有系统那样搜索共享关键字，而是使用自动推理和计算创造力等最先进的技术，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事情。瑟琳娜将作为实体存在于工作环境中，并通过智能手机等个人技术实现。在用户允许的情况下，SerenA将主动在用户的本地环境中搜索人和信息，包括物理和虚拟的，例如，允许它建议互不认识的人可能会在会面中找到一些价值（也许是因为他们在学术世界的特定方面有共同的兴趣）。或者在某一特定的电子期刊中，通过关键词搜索推荐一篇被遗漏的论文（因为它与正在搜索的用户感兴趣的其他事物有联系）。SerenA将拥有自己的文档分析技术，但它也将利用语义网提供的日益丰富的信息。该项目将包括开发一个关于音乐和音乐学信息的试验台，作为一个学术领域的范例，可以从这种使能技术中受益。重要的是，SerenA将有专门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。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，以及他们与可能对他们很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.