A stake in cyberspace

Abstract

Consider the information 'terrain' in which we browse and interact over the Internet, principally the World Wide Web but also USENET, email and IRC. This differs in several basic ways from the territory that we are used to: We can be - and often want to be - in several places at once. The information terrain is hard to navigate. It is infinite and heterogeneous. There are only rudimentary maps. It is in a state of flux, and is not sharply distinguished from the artifacts it sustains. Currently we spend most of our time wandering alone where there is much evidence of human activity, but where the natives themselves and their tools are nowhere to be seen. When we do encounter others, we pass low-bandwidth messages back and forth, often knowing little about our interlocutors.The thesis of this position paper is: The most useful notion of the terrain is the combination of users and the shared information that they interact with, not the information alone. Information is where users should be able to encounter other users with similar interests. We need to support collaboration and other forms of social interaction between users, who either meet while browsing information or who are already members of a group. The key to collaborative information sharing and interaction on the Internet is the concept of boundary, which encompasses naming, security and integrity of shared data, and user communication and awareness. The navigation problem will not go away, but boundaries enable us to impose structure on the sprawl.We now present an early snapshot of a design that addresses these points.