Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure 9.9
Invoking the newsputer functionality.
9.7 Active Knowledge and Semantic Surfaces
So far we have introduced the concept of newsputers and have shown how
newspapers, books, magazines, and other printed materials can be integrated
into computer-based pervasive infrastructures. We have also explained how
enhanced environments supporting such integration can be created, and
have provided experimental results demonstrating the practicality of the
approach.
Of course, to transform this promising approach into a mature technol-
ogy, it would be necessary to enrich the features of the environment and,
what is especially important, to consider some other, more diverse applica-
tions of newsputers. In this line of thought, newsputer-based multimedia
and multiple views of events, objects, and phenomena could be employed in
self-explanatory materials and process components for education, intelligent
advertising, gaming, entertainment, and so on.
Self-explanatory software components and human-computer interfaces
[15,16] could support software engineers, ordinary users, and even people
with disabilities [17,18] in overcoming obstacles and difficult problems. Such
components and interfaces employ a plurality of views in different multime-
dia formats to provide explicit knowledge about the corresponding object
and processes and to make them self-explanatory. Multimedia views are
often associated with:
•
Moments of time
•
Positions in space
•
Diversity of materials
•
Functional attributes
