title: "Towards a Dynamic Multiscale Personalized Information Space"
authors: Amy Rae Fox, Philip J. Guo, Clemens Nylandsted Klokmose, Peter Dalsgaard, Arvind Satyanarayan, Haijun Xia, James D. Hollan
venue: Convivial Computing Salon (workshop at the <Programming> conference)
year: 2020

abstract: >
  The historical moment when a person worked in front of a single
  computer has passed. Computers are now ubiquitous and embedded in
  virtually every new device and system, ranging from the omnipresent
  cellphone to the complex web of sociotechnical systems that envelop
  most every sphere of personal and professional life. They connect our
  activities to ever-expanding information resources with previously
  unimaginable computational power. Yet with all the increases in
  capacity, speed, and connectivity, information-based activities too
  often remain difficult, awkward, and frustrating. Even after six
  decades of design evolution there is little of the naturalness and
  contextual sensitivity required for convivial interaction with
  computer-mediated information.
  <br/><br/>
  We envision a future in which the existing world of documents and
  applications is linked to a multiscale personalized information space
  in which dynamic visual entities behave in accordance with cognitively
  motivated rules sensitive to tasks, personal and group interaction
  histories, and context. As a group of cognitive and computer
  scientists, we have come together jointly committed to this vision and
  convinced of the crucial importance of questioning the presupposition
  that information is fundamentally passive data disconnected from
  processes, tasks, context, and personal histories. We aim to
  redesignate the role that computers play in human life from devices
  with which we interact to partners with whom we collaborate.
  <br/><br/>
  The heart of the project is to rethink the nature of computer-mediated
  information as a basis to begin to fully realize the potential of
  computers to assist information-based activities. This requires
  challenging fundamental presuppositions that have led to today's
  walled gardens and information silos. Our goal is to catalyze an
  international research comunity to rethink the nature of information
  as a basis for radically advancing the human-centered design of
  information-based work and helping to ensure the future is one of
  convivial, effective, and humane systems. In this paper, we propose a
  new view of information, discuss cognitive requirements for a
  human-centered information space, and sketch a research agenda and
  approach.

bibtex: >
  @inproceedings{Fox2020,
  author = {Fox, Amy Rae and Guo, Philip and Klokmose, Clemens Nylandsted and Dalsgaard, Peter and Satyanarayan, Arvind and Xia, Haijun and Hollan, James D.},
  title = {Towards a Dynamic Multiscale Personal Information Space: Beyond Application and Document Centered Views of Information},
  year = {2020},
  isbn = {9781450375078},
  publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery},
  address = {New York, NY, USA},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.1145/3397537.3397542},
  doi = {10.1145/3397537.3397542},
  booktitle = {Conference Companion of the 4th International Conference on Art, Science, and Engineering of Programming},
  pages = {136--143},
  numpages = {8},
  keywords = {Webstrates, dynamic media, information visualization, Vega-Lite, instrumental paradigm, co-adaptive systems, activity history, cognitive tools, distributed cognition, human computer interaction},
  location = {Porto, Portugal},
  series = {<programming> '20}
  }