Dynamic Topic Extension or BookMashing(tm) ;) is a recent idea I had. The core concept is to utilize emerging technologies to create hybrid books from a single original book, dynamically, on the fly, as the viewer is reading the book and making selections. Originally a viewer/reader (human, not digital) would select either a topic or an existing book to begin reading. As each page is displayed, that page would be analyzed against a domain specific ontology of topical information. As the ontology recognized central topics or associations with other topics not mentioned on the page, a list of new but related topics would be built and handed to a search engine. Those results would either be displayed inline with the text as possible expansions or, on a column to the right or left of the original text. As the user began making expansion selections, that information would be associated with the concepts in the ontology and used to be apply weighting to future results.
The same techniques could be used to build conceptual graphs of the set of books determined relavant through the ontologically driven search. Alternatively, a set of graphs could be dynamically built as the user read the text associated with the source or 'injected' information. When he decides to stop reading for the time, he would have an automatic set of notes generated (as conceptrual graphs) that he could review and use to strengthen his memory and understanding of the information that was read.
I think something like this would be well suited for Oragami's or Tablet PC Devices.
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