Visualizing Cyberspace: Search, Analysis, and Display of Information

The accessibility of information on the Internet could be dramatically increased by providing users with meaningful semantically rich visualizations of the relationships among diverse information sources and data. However, most attempts to visualize the web have focused on its superficial structure rather than the meaning of its contents. Similarly, most current software tools provide only narrow browsing capabilities. With our approach, users will be able to: find information relevant to their current task; integrate, reorganize, and augment information from the web with information in personal work environments; display information so that relationships that are key to decisions are clear and may be briefed to others. We propose to develop a cyberspace environment that supports techniques for the visualization of the semantic relationships among data objects, not just the structure of their "locations". We will employ direct manipulation data objectification techniques, combined with advanced visualization technology to: ¿ develop new technology for integrating diverse information sources within a browsable environment, ¿ build this technology on a foundation that leverages our expertise at developing environments for visualizing and manipulating information for both military and corporate organizations, ¿ select a testbed domain and application to guide development and assure architectural compatibility with other DARPA programs.