Jenifer Tennison
email: jft@psyc.nott.ac.uk
url: http://www.psyc.nott.ac.uk/aigr/people/jft.html
With advances in communications technologies, organisations have spread over continents and teleworking from home has thrived. However, this poses problems in keeping workers in touch with each other, especially when they are involved in group work. I believe that the linking of MOO and Web technologies could solve some of these problems. When hypertext was first conceived by Vanavar Bush [Bush45], he envisioned a growing, evolving set of information. This growing set of information, I now refer to as a 'living document'. Examples living document applications are the Usenet News hierarchies, Organisational Information Systems (OIS) [Prinz93] and Design Rationale (DR) [Shum92].
The technologies of the Web and MOOs have been integrated in CHIME [Epstein95], which serves as both an httpd server and a MOO, forming an intelligent living document. MOO stands for MUD (multi-user dungeon/dimension) - Object Oriented. MUDs started as text-based adventure games in which multiple players could interact as well as complete the game. MOOs evolved from this origin by adding an hierarchical object-oriented structure, where each object has properties and 'verbs' (procedures) defined on them. MOOs have developed into much richer environments than MUDs ever were, and open more possibilities, as are described here.
In CHIME, the components of the architecture in Figure 1 translate into:
Users connect to CHIME both through the MOO and the Web. They move from room to room, clicking on objects to view them through the web, which enacts code written via the moo, and created on the basis of current information.
There are four major benefits that CHIME holds over other intelligent living documentation systems. Firstly, CHIME is flexible for the users, allowing them to use their MOO and Web clients of preference. Secondly, models of the users are integrated into the design of the system: every user is represented by an object. This makes it adaptable to many different people. Thirdly, the MOO offers real-time communication, allowing greater cooperation and discussion between users. Finally, CHIME brings with it the automatic generation of html pages on the basis of current information in the knowledge repository, and on the basis of the user model.
The linking of MOOs and the Web in the ways described above offer a variety of opportunities for future working practices: in enhancing group work, the storage of organisational information, and the decrease in the isolation of teleworkers. However, several areas require further development in application, including the development of integrated clients ([Donath], [Newberg]), and more complex objects to act as intelligent intermediaries, for example, using forms.
I would like to thank particularly Sam Epstein for his help in preparing this poster, and all the residents of ChibaMOO - The Sprawl.
