Knowledge Navigator
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The Knowledge Navigator is a concept described by former Apple Computer CEO John Sculley in his 1987 book, Odyssey. It describes a device which can access a large networked database of hypertext information, and use software agents to assist searching for information.
Apple produced several concept videos showcasing the idea. All of them featured a tablet style computer with numerous advanced capabilities, including an excellent text-to-speech system with no hint of "computerese", and an equally powerful speech understanding system, allowing the user to converse with the system via an animated "butler" as the software agent.
In one vignette a university professor returns home and turns on his computer, in the form of a tablet the size of a large-format book. The agent is a bow-tie wearing butler who appears on the screen and informs him that he has several calls waiting. He ignores most of these, from his mother, and instead uses the system to compile data for a talk on global warming. While he is doing this, the computer informs him that a colleague is calling, and they then exchange data through their machines while holding a video based conversation.
In another such video, a young student gives a class presentation on volcanoes using a hand-held version of the system, eventually sending video from it to the "blackboard" to show a video of an exploding volcano. In a final installment a user scans in a newspaper by placing it on the screen of the full-sized version, and then has it help him learn to read by listening to him read the scanned results, and prompting when he pauses.
As a vision statement the films were groundbreaking, as powerful a vision of the future of computing as 2001: A Space Odyssey. At the same time they were notable for their rather poor acting and low quality productions.
The very astute bow tie wearing software agent in the video has been the center of quite a few heated discussions in the domain of human-computer interaction. It was criticized as being an unrealistic portrayal of the capacities of any software agent in the foreseeable future, or even in a distant future. Some User interface professionals like Ben Shneiderman of the University of Maryland, College Park have also criticized its use of a human likeness for giving a misleading idea of the nature of any interaction with a computer, present or future.
When one considers recent research in the field of Ubiquitous computing and Augmented reality interfaces many of the aspects of the Knowledge Navigator seem a bit quaint. For some however this video prototype was and/or still is a source of motivation for their work. They see it as a goal set in a future they might help create one day.
To some extent the concept was also used to position the Apple Newton handheld device. Newton was released before the technology was mature however, and proved to be a commercial failure. Eventually, the advent of the Internet and the World Wide Web and several devices marketed by Apple's competitors would indeed fulfill some of the visions of the Knowledge Navigator.
See also
External links
- Two extracts (47 seconds each) of the "professor" video: http://www.billzarchy.com/clips/clips_apple_nav.html
- The entire "professor" video (5 min 30 s at lower quality): http://www.stargeek.com/item/13723.html